A little bit of church history

Edinburgh's Father Mike Fallon is taking a quietly strong stand against the power of the Vatican by asking for a debate on two of the most dearly held principles in the Catholic Church: the vow of celibacy and the ban on ordaining women. "My fundamental disagreement would be that there is no discussion allowed on either of the issues," says Fallon, whom some might see as being at the forefront of a simmering progressive rebellion against Rome within the priesthood. "Whether there is change or not is another matter, but there has to be debate."

Sister Roseann Reddy, co-founder of Glasgow-based order the Sisters of the Gospel of Life,  believes reform is not necessary. She said: "If you are a member of the Catholic Church we are not a democracy and we have never claimed to be a democracy...I wouldn't think the answer is married priests or woman priests..."

A Roman Catholic Church with women cardinals? And priests who are not celibate? More than 1,000 lay church-goers and priests attended a meeting in Dublin to discuss these ideas and others they believe are essential to the survival of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

The average age of priests in Ireland is 64, that in just 20 years there will not be enough priests to serve the country's congregations. "The flood of men that used to come forward for the vocation of priesthood is today a mere trickle," Father Brendan Hoban of the Association of Catholic Priests, told NBC News. "If there are no priests, there will be no Eucharist, no Mass." The association is convinced the requirement for celibacy is to blame and says it needs to be dropped. According to a survey commissioned by the group, 90 percent of Irish Catholics support the introduction of married priests.


 There is a website for hiring married priests for various religious rituals. It also carries articles explaining the origin and introduction of celibacy into the church which makes for interesting reading for those of who seek the materialist roots of ideas.

For the first 1200 years of the church’s existence, priests, bishops and 39 popes were married. Celibacy existed in the first century among hermits and monks, but it was considered an optional, alternative lifestyle. Medieval politics brought about the discipline of mandatory celibacy for priests. St. Peter " upon this rock I will build my church" was married. There are three references in the bible about St. Peter’s wife, his mother-in-law and his family.

It all began in AD 313, when the Roman emperor Constantine legalized Christianity within the Roman Empire. With his legislation, the early church evolved from a persecuted group of small communities to become the official faith of a world power under Emperor Theodosius in AD 380.Constantine’s intentions in adopting Christianity were not entirely spiritual. His position was being challenged by political groups; he needed to display his power. Forcing other politicians to become Christians was a test of their loyalty. Constantine used the new religion as an effective tool to weed out his enemies. It strengthened his political power. Constantine also was faced with unifying the many peoples his armies had vanquished. Christianity was the key to establishing a new Roman identity in the conquered peoples. On the surface he made them Christians to save their souls, but this new religion was his final act of conquest over them.

With Christianity now the official religion of the Roman Empire, many things changed very quickly in the church. Priests from the small communities were given special social rank among their new Roman friends. They no longer had to hide from Roman soldiers and fear for their lives. Instead, they received pay for their services as priests and enjoyed special privileges in Roman society. Bishops were given civil authority and assigned jurisdiction over the people in their area. Romans, who were members of the local ruling elite, quickly converted to Christianity as ordered by the Emperor. These were men trained in public life and skilled in city politics. They became priests and rapidly moved into positions of leadership in the church. These Roman politicians, with their newly acquired priesthood, brought the impersonal and legalistic attitudes of government to the church. The celebration of the eucharist moved from small home gatherings to what we now call "mass" involving huge numbers of people in large buildings. The celebration of the Eucharist became a highly structured ritual that imitated the ceremonies of Rome’s imperial court. This Roman influence is the source of our vestments, genuflection, kneeling, and the strict formality of mass. An institutional church structure emerged mirroring that of the Roman government. Large buildings, church tribunal courts, rulers and subjects began to replace the family-based small communities that were served by a local married priesthood. The new Roman priests worked to shift authority away from the married priests in the small communities and consolidate political power around themselves. With the assistance of the Roman Empire, church leadership became a hierarchy that moved away from its family origins and into the Roman mindset of a ruling class that was above the people in the street.

In 366, Pope Damasus began the assault on the married priesthood by declaring that priests could continue to marry, but that they were not allowed to express their love sexually with their wives.The priests and people alike rejected this law. In the year 385, Pope Siricius abandoned his own wife and children in order to gain his papal position. He immediately decreed that all priests could no longer be married, but he was unable to enforce compliance to his outrageous new law. In 401, St. Augustine wrote that "Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman."

 The church adopted the Roman practice of men alone holding institutional authority. There is solid historical evidence that women served as priests and pastors prior to this time. In 494 women’s participation in the leadership of small communities came to an end when Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. This legislation is perhaps the strongest proof we have of women serving as spiritual leaders in the early church. Women’s roles in the church diminished as popes and bishops marched in lockstep with the Roman authorities.

Celibate bishops and priests put great emphasis on sin and guilt in an effort to establish uniformity and control. It was during this period of church history that marriage after divorce was declared to be a sin. Those who were divorced and remarried were no longer permitted to receive the sacrament. Up to this time, marriages were adjudicated, consensually dissolved, and individuals were free to marry again, and free to receive holy communion.

Later on in the early Middle Ages another political dynamic was at play. The medieval church hierarchy was in a power struggle with the many monarchies and royal families across Europe. With the ability to control royal marriages, Rome realized that it could influence political alliances and manipulate affairs of state. As a result of this new effort to control royal alliances, being barred from communion and the sacraments immediately punished ordinary people who divorced and re-married. They were denied full participation in the life of the church because they did not comply to the will of church authorities. Legal status replaced spirituality as the benchmark for holiness

In this growing atmosphere of power and legalism, certain medieval popes abused their authority. In the year 1075, Pope Gregory VII declared that nobody could judge a pope except God. Introducing the concept of infallibility, he was the first pope to decree that Rome can never be in error. He had statues made in his likeness and placed them in churches throughout Europe. He insisted that everyone must obey the pope, and that all popes are saints by virtue of their association with St. Peter. The hierarchy viewed married priests as an obstacle to their quest for total control of the church and focused a two pronged attack against them. They used mandatory celibacy to attack and dissolve the influential priestly families throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world. At the same time they claimed ownership of the churches and the lands owned by married priests. As landowners the medieval hierarchy knew that they would gain the political power they sought in every country in Europe. An additional benefit of land ownership was money. They now had the ability to collect taxes from the faithful and charge money for indulgences and other sacramental ministry. This practice contributed to the Protestant reformation and the splintering of the Roman Catholic church community in the sixteenth century.

In the eleventh century, the attacks against the married priesthood grew in intensity. In 1074, Pope Gregory VII legislated that anyone to be ordained must first pledge celibacy. Continuing his attack against women, he publicly stated that "...the Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape the clutches of their wives". Within twenty years, things took a turn for the worse.In the year 1095, there was an escalation of brutal force against married priests and their families. Pope Urban II ordered that married priests who ignored the celibacy laws be imprisoned for the good of their souls. He had the wives and children of those married priests sold into slavery, and the money went to church coffers. The effort to consolidate church power in the medieval hierarchy and to seize the land assets the married priest families saw its victory in 1139. The legislation that effectively ended optional celibacy for priests came from the Second Lateran Council under Pope Innocent II. The true motivation for these laws was the desire to acquire land throughout Europe and strengthen the papal power base. The laws demanding mandatory celibacy for priests used the language of purity and holiness, but their true intent was to solidify control over the lower clergy and eliminate any challenge to the political objectives of the medieval hierarchy.

At the time, the Italian bishop Ulric of Imola, argued that the hierarchy had no right to forbid marriage to priests and urged bishops and priests not to abandon their families. Bishop Ulrich said that, "When celibacy is imposed, priests will commit sins far worse than fornication."

Pope-ing The Question

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict called for perseverance in the face of an economic crisis that has led to hardship and rising unemployment across Europe as he presided over a procession around Rome's Colosseum to mark Jesus Christ's crucifixion and death on Good Friday.

The German pontiff, who turns 85 this month, stood before thousands of people holding candles at the traditional Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) march and listened to reflections on family unity that lamented divorce, abortion and infidelity.

Families from Italy, Ireland, Burkina Faso and Peru took turns carrying a cross around the ancient site associated with early Christian martyrs in one of the main services before Easter, the climax of the Christian year.

"The situation of many families is made worse by the threat of unemployment and other negative effects of the economic crisis," the pope said.

"At times of trouble, when our families have to face pain and adversity, let us look to Christ's cross. There we can find the courage and the strength to press on."

The economic crisis has led to increasing poverty and hardship in Europe and countries such as Greece and Italy have seen a wave of suicides in recent weeks linked to financial woes such as unemployment and companies going bankrupt.

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Looking to the cross will not be helping any family in financial crisis especially if you do in a Church, you'll have to put your coppers in a plate to do so! The Pope again proves he is far removed from reality by spouting this rubbish. Living and working inside one of the richest organisations in the world gives a poor understanding of econimic conditions of the many. Perhaps instead of asking already hard hit working people to put their faith in the ridiculousness of religion, it would be better to have them understand that they need not live like this at all.

SussexSocialist

Religion's slow demise

The theoretical physicist Laurence Krauss said we are all stardust. "You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded...So forget Jesus. Stars died so you could live."

Christianity is waning in England and could be outnumbered by non-believers within 20 years. A study by researchers at the House of Commons Library concluded that Christianity had declined to 69 percent of the population while those with no religion increased to 22 percent. It showed there were 41 million Christians in Britain, down nearly 8 percent since 2004. Meanwhile, the number of nonbelievers stood at 13.4 million, up 49 percent over the same period. The research is considered authoritative because it examined a sample size of 50,000 people.

“If these populations continue to shrink and grow by the same number of people each year,” the study said, “the number of people with no religion will overtake the number of Christians in Great Britain in 20 years.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation placed a full-page ad in a form of an open letter in today’s New York Times urging liberal and nominal Roman Catholics to “quit” their church over its war against contraception.

“As a member of the ‘flock’ of an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys Club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass,” the advert recommends. The ad concludes by inviting nominal Catholics to “join those of us who put humanity above dogma.”

The NYT required FFRF to water down its headline from the original "It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church," to "It’s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church." FFRF co-president, Dan Barker, called that decision “a sign of the Catholic Church’s inordinate power to intimidate and muzzle criticism.”

FFRF's other co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor explained “The Roman Catholic hierarchy would wither away without the support, financial and otherwise, of its members."

the Catholic child abuse

The abuse of thousands of innocent children in state- and church-run institutions in Ireland amounted to torture, a report from Amnesty International has found. Youngsters suffered decades of inhuman and degrading treatment by being brutalised, beaten and starved, the human rights watchdog said. The horrific details of neglect, physical abuse and rape were revealed in four state-ordered reports - the Ferns, Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne reports.

Colm O'Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, said: "The abuse of tens of thousands of Irish children is perhaps the greatest human rights failure in the history of the state. Much of the abuse described in the Ryan Report meets the legal definition of torture under international human rights law. Children were tortured. They were brutalised, beaten, starved and abused. There has been little justice for these victims. Those who failed as guardians, civil servants, clergy, gardai and members of religious orders have avoided accountability."

Amnesty's a new report, In Plain Sight, prepared by Dr Carole Holohan, explored why it had happened - and to ensure it never happened again.
Mr O'Gorman said: "This abuse happened not because we didn't know about it, but because many people across society turned a blind eye to it. It is not true that everyone knew, but deep veins of knowledge existed across Irish society and people in positions of power ignored their responsibility to act. Attitudes to poverty at both the public and political level, were also significant factors. Society judged and criminalised children for being poor rather than address the underlying factors that condemned their families to poverty." Mr O'Gorman said Amnesty's research had shown that the true scandal was not that the system failed children, but that there had been no functioning system. "Instead, children were abandoned to a chaotic, unregulated arrangement where no-one was accountable for failures to protect and care for them,"

In November 2009, the Murphy Report found four successive archbishops in Dublin had covered up allegations of abuse and had not reported claims to gardai for decades. Six months earlier, the damning Ryan Report shocked the nation with revelations that tens of thousands of children had been neglected and suffered physical and sexual abuse for decades in orphanages, industrial schools and residential institutions run by religious orders. And the Ferns Report, published in October 2005, revealed more than 100 allegations had been made against 21 priests over 40 years - with the Catholic Church hierarchy putting the interests of priests before children.

SOYMB says it was the political power that the Catholic Church once exercised in Ireland that allowed it to cover up for so long the child abuse. The guilt of the Church was, and is, in the appalling fact that in order to preserve its awesome power over its credulous membership it was prepared to protect those engaged in the most vile practices against children.

When the British withdrew from the greater part of Ireland there was no discernable concern about the Catholic Church becoming almost wholly responsible for the general ‘education’ of the young, including places of care and security like orphanages and juvenile penal institutions. Governance over education was clearly prescribed under the Church’s Code of Canon Law cc. 1381, 1382. Control of the minds of the young was vital to the adult acceptance of the outrageous basis of religious belief. The church’s dirty washing was becoming public. They were not just a few "bad apples" but whole orchards of them - priests, nuns and Christian Brothers remained in the fold to torture and rape innocent children whose care they had been charged with.

Eventually public disquiet became so clamorous that the Irish government, fearful of legal action by victims for dereliction of the State’s duty of care had to do something about it. Given the abundance of proven cases not only in Ireland but in other countries throughout the world where paedophile Irish priests had been moved by church authorities in order to escape the opprobrium that their public conviction would bring on the Church, it was reasonable to expect swift and intensive action into sources of information that would help the Authorities to get details of the identity of the criminals and their current location. But the Garda did not bring their battering rams to the doors of Bishoprics where such information might be found. Not a single officer of the Church who was complicit in withholding information into these utterly heinous crimes appeared in the dock. Instead the state went into negotiations with the church authorities about setting up a Commission of Enquiry into the disgustingly unsavoury affair and the church authorities - presumably the cardinal and the bishops - agreed to co-operate with the Enquiry on the basis of an undertaking from the State that it (the church authorities) would not have to reveal the identity of its miscreants and that the Church’s liability for financial compensation to victims should be capped at some 128 million euro. This latter is estimated at 1.3 billion euros which leaves the Irish taxpayer liable for some one billion euros for the crimes of the clergy.

The Ryan Commission heard evidence from literally thousands of victims into rape, buggery and brutality in Catholic institutions where children and young people had been placed by the State for care and protection over a period of some four decades. The Enquiry took ten years and its conclusion was that these utterly depraved practices were ’endemic’ in such institutions. It is hard to imagine the magnitude of suffering inflicted on children of all ages over decades by brutal priests and nuns numerously permeated into a grossly arrogant and sanctimonious church whose maintained code of silence must surely have equalled the evil of its debauched clerics.

Papal Bull

The late pope John Paul II was put on the path to sainthood this Sunday. Polish-born Karol Wojtyla who died in 2005, received a beatification mass in Saint Peter's Square that gave him the status of "blessed" which leaves him just one step away from sainthood.

John Paul's years in the Vatican were certainly controversial. He lived through interesting times, as the saying goes, and like any Pope worth his salt involved himself in world political affairs when it was convenient to do so and made acquaintances with many world leaders. He, for instance, referred to Chilean dictator, Pinochet, and his wife as "an exemplary Christian couple". When this enemy of Chilean democracy, who had killed thousands of his opponents, was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity, the Pope waded in on his defence demanding his release, stating that as a Chilean leader at the time of his crimes he was entitled to immunity - a kind of papal infallibility for fascists. Throughout South America, John Paul sided with the forces of reaction, supporting right wing elites and restraining any priest who saw themselves as on the side of the impoverished masses. The papal nuncios to the Chilean and Argentinean military dictatorships he promoted to cardinals.

The rise of Solidarity and working class militancy in Poland at the beginning of the 1980s panicked governments aroundm the world. The 'communists' of eastern Europe feared a growing threat to their rule, while the governments of the West saw the mobilisation of an angry section of society that could only inspire militancy in their own countries. While John Paul wished to see the end of Stalinist rule, he was keen this should not be via violent revolution and, moreover, at the hands of left wing sections of Polish society, but by the right. In 1980 John Paul granted an audience to a group headed by Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and in the coming years the Vatican would find tens of millions of dollars to finance Solidarity's struggle. Make no mistake; the Vatican was not openly supporting the demands of the workers in their struggle against an undemocratic, unaccountable Stalinist bureaucracy. After all, what was the Vatican if not undemocratic, unaccountable and bureaucratic? Instead, its aim was to contain the movement, to see it had the guidance of nationalistic and right-leaning Catholic ideologues and to ensure its confrontation with the Polish leadership did not get out of hand and win larger international support from workers. Many saw John Paul as a champion of democracy and human rights. The truth is he was a conscientious defender of the established order of western-style class privilege.

473 beatifications were made under the John Paul papacy, a figure that is twice the number of saints made in the previous 400 years. Among those he beatified and elevated to the ranks of the saints by John Paul II was the anti-Semite Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII, the latter being the same Pius who collaborated with the fascist regimes in Spain, Italy and Germany. Pius XII ordered the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany to steer clear of political activity, to close its political parties and to stifle its newspapers. Hitler would refer to this Papal move as "a great achievement" and of enormous advantage in the "fight against international Jewry". Also elevated to sainthood was Josemaria Escrivç, the founder of the hierarchical and clandestine Opus Dei in Madrid in 1928, and described by Hitler as "the saviour of the Spanish church" John Paul beatified the 1940s archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was imprisoned by the Tito government as a Nazi collaborate and as a wartime sympathiser with the pro-Nazi government of Croatia, which killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies

Then, of course, there this Pope's policy of protecting children from the sexual abuse by priests and Church officials. John Paul was involved in the cover-up and was complicit in attempting to conceal it, issuing an edict demanding Church secrecy in child abuse allegations and his ruling on the matter was felt to be so conclusive that one leader of a Spanish seminary persuaded his scholars that he had the Pope's blessing to masturbate them.

While covering up the excesses of a child abusing clergy, John Paul was ever ready to pronounce papal verdicts condemning homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, divorce, abortion and the use of birth control. In spite of a growing Aids epidemic John Paul referred to the use of condoms as a 'culture of death'.Undoubtedly, millions who looked to John Paul for guidance, who declined the use of protection during sex, were handed a death sentence. Perhaps millions of women were forced, by fear of the flames of hell, to bring young families into a world of abject poverty and early death through disease and hunger.

Pope John Paul was just another reactionary agent of oppression, like all of his predecessors. And the Vatican's reactionary credentials are nothing new.

In God They Trust

The Pope heads an organisation with 1.3 billion followers who are encouraged to put their trust in a god and to pray to this god to solve the major problems of the day, thus diminishing people's faith in their own ability to sort out their own problems and undermining the likelihood of workers uniting and organising with a common objective. It has been part of the foundation of reaction since the start, whether it was urging the masses to obey the Caesars, supporting the feudal hierarchical order, opposing the Protestant reformation or siding with the capitalist class against the workers, determined always to stifle the anger of the oppressed with promises of reward in heaven for their sufferings if they struggle on uncomplainingly, and an eternity in the sulphurous pits of hell if they organised to better their lot. The Roman Catholic Church, like the Protestant churches is a whole-hearted supporter of private property. The Roman Catholic Church arrogated onto itself the role of arbiter in things appertaining not only to matters of what it called ‘morality’ but to all forms of human behaviour and even juridical practice. According to Pope Leo XIII (Encyclical, Immortale Dei ‘On the Christian Constitution of States’, November 1885) canon law is effectively superior to the civil law, having derived from Jesus Christ through Peter and the apostles to the Church.

While people have become disillusioned about political realities, it hasn't inspired them with revolution, just revulsion. Religion may profit from this, since it feeds on despair like flies feed on cow-shit. Ignorance is still rife, despite our literacy and sophistication. Our culture has certainly not kept pace with our discoveries. But it is having to change, whether people like it or not. We aren't cowed by the priests like we used to be. Science made fools of them. The Pope will not end the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, for example, even though every Catholic with a rudimentary scientific education knows that there is no divine spark at conception, unseeable until nine months later; the entire process of human reproduction is now well known and it would be expected in any doctor's surgery that in practice no-one would hold such a belief. Few believe in the Pope, as being anything but a left over from bygone times. But nevertheless rather than obeying the Pope, we choose the form of our own mental domination, just as in work we no longer slave for one master but can choose from hundreds to slave for. The pagan backdrop of Catholicism is filled by that of Hinduism or Buddhism removed from their own social contexts of native exploitation, generating a thousand and one cults and sects.

Tom Paine wrote, tolerance is for Popes: it implies someone with the power or right to ‘tolerate’. Socialists seek a society of universal equality - the world over - based upon the free association of producers. For us, the whole community means the whole community. Which necessarily excludes working with ‘faith groups’ whether Catholic, Christian or Islamic whose antiquated views serve only to divide the working class, and conceal the real causes of their social subordination. The Catholic Church's calls for “just" wages, "just" prices and "just" profits instead of real change .

Pope Benedict XVI raised an interesting question when he visited Auschwitz. "In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God. Why Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?" A good question, but we doubt if the Holy Father has had any reply. God has remained singularly silent since biblical times.

Karl Marx, who so famously described religion as “...the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”, underwent a reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State in an article that was republished in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, to add further papal endorsement. The article reads “We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system. If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”
The Pope himself has said "The emergencies of famine and the environment demonstrate with growing clarity that the logic of profit, if predominant, increases the disproportion between the rich and the poor and leads to a ruinous exploitation of the planet. Capitalism should not be considered the only valid model of economic organisation."
The Vatican has always tried to position itself as a helper of the poor. As James Connolly explained as far back as 1908 "...the Catholic Church always accepts the established order, even if it has warred upon those who had striven to establish such order...the Church 'does not put all her eggs in one basket' and the man who imagines that in the supreme hour of the proletarian struggle for victory the Church will definitely line up with the forces of capitalism, and pledge her very existence as a Church upon the hazardous chance of the capitalists winning, simply does not understand the first thing about the policy of the Church...When that day comes the Papal Encyclical against socialism will be conveniently forgotten by the Papal historians..."

SOYMB does NOT offer its welcome to The Pope on his visit to the UK.

Marx for Pope

We read , Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has undergone a reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church. Professor Sans’s article was first published in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State. The decision to republish it in the Vatican newspaper gives it added papal endorsement.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.
Georg Sans, a professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.
“We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,” Professor Sans wrote. “If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”

Professor Sans argues that Marx’s intellectual legacy was marred by the misappropriation of his work by the communist [sic] regimes of the 20th century.

SOYMB is minded of James Connolly in 1908 and his article Roman Catholicism and Socialism where he says :-

" ...when it [ the Roman Catholic Church ] realises that the cause of capitalism is a lost cause it will find excuse enough to allow freedom of speech and expression to those lowly priests whose socialist declarations it will then use to cover and hide the absolute anti-socialism of the Roman Propaganda. When that day comes the Papal Encyclical against socialism will be conveniently forgotten by the Papal historians...and the communistic utterances of the early fathers as proofs of Catholic sympathy with progressive ideas. Thus it has been in the past. Thus it will be, at least attempted, in the future. "

The Pope and the Pill

Towards the end of July 1968 the then Pope Giovanni Montini issued an Encyclical titled Humanae Vitae. The September 1968 Socialist Standard considered it worthy of a short article titled The Pope and the Pill. But, first, it is worth remembering that where human life is concerned the Vatican is deserving of our utmost contempt. Consider, for example, what this group of lying, fascist dinosaurs said in relation to condoms: that their use either did not offer protection against or actually caused AIDS. Recall also Mother Theresa opining that even a child who breathed only for a few hours meant another soul for heaven. And, of course, it is the market system, so beloved of the Popes of the various religions, that is responsible worldwide for the unnecessary deaths of some 40,000 children under the age of five every single day.

"The unsurprising Papal edict on birth control brought the deepest anguish only to working class Catholics. The rich ones - like the Kennedys - can raise large families without any economic problems.

One thing the Encyclical has not done is to end the long dispute about Catholicism and contraceptives. Thus we have recently been entertained with some arguments whose sophistry makes the old one about the number of angels dancing on the needle point look positively clumsy.

For example: did not God give man the ability to make artificial contraceptives in the same way as he gave him the rhythm method which the Pope approves?

For example: if it is sinful to destroy life in human spermatozoa is it not also sinful to destroy it with pesticides, or with anti-biotics, or with the weapons of war?

Through all of this the Catholics did not pursue an undeviating course. The Encyclical kept open an escape route by implying an approval of contraception by means of an artificially induced menstrual regularity - which might be taken to include the Pill. And there was Cardinal Heenan's double act of approving the Pope's decision while saying that Catholics who practised birth control could also accept the sacrament.

These sophistries are typical of those needed to bolster religious dogma, especially when it is under pressure from the material facts of life.

Intellectual dishonesty and hair-splitting is an unsettling business, much as the Church must be accustomed to it. For the rest of us, the simple way out of the difficulty is to recognise the overwhelming evidence against religion and to look at life in terms not of human bigotry but of human interest."