Circumstance and chance have conspired to compel me to write about one of my favorite topics of discussion - religion. "Oh, god," you say, "here it comes!" Well if the topic bores you, or if you feel so passionately about it that you can't read another point of view without getting angry, then feel free to skip today's writing. I have firm opinions about the matter, but I don't let that fact dominate my consciousness or the way I conduct my life - I'm sure there will be plenty of entries to come that have nothing to do with religion at all.

One of the first inspirations I had to write on this topic came a few weeks ago when Zup wrote in his journal that he'd been to see a Catholic Priest for guidance and counseling about his homosexuality. As chance would have it Mickey phoned me last night. Although I wasn't there to take his call (out with Brent) just hearing his voice on the answering machine was enough to get my mind in high gear on religion. Mickey and I have had some of the *best* discussions on the point of religion. I completely enjoy them. In our talks he has made me see some things I was unwilling to see before. It might read a little like I'm picking on Andy (Zup) later in this entry. I'm not. I like Andy and I think he's both an interesting and kind person. Both Andy and Mickey are members of the world's foremost organized religious institutions. I think Mickey's sense of reverence extends beyond the limits of man's institutions. I haven't discussed the subject with Andy enough to know the boundaries of his faith. I will most certainly attack religious institutions at their face value today, and I will begin with Andy and his priest. But they're just a starting point for discussion, nothing more.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and actually believed it all until I was eighteen years old. I spent every conscious year of my life to that point going to Mass and religious education classes once a week. I know something of Catholicism. The Church has many opinions and edicts on moral and religious thought. They come in two classes; Dogma and Teachings.

Dogma are those things which you must accept as truth if you want to call yourself Catholic. For instance, you must believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah (from the Jewish Faith) and that his death and resurrection absolved mankind of Original Sin and allowed for the forgiveness of sins committed in life. Teachings are those things which the Church expects its followers to hold true, but are not at the very core of the religion and may be revised from time to time. A good example of a Catholic teaching is the tradition of not eating meat on Friday. This teaching began in medieval times to get the people of Christendom to eat more fish, fish which contained iodine, a deficiency in the medieval diet. Until the Vatican II Council of the mid 1960's the Church taught that meat was to be avoided every Friday. Vatican II revised this teaching to cover only the holy time of Lent, prior to Easter. Through most of it's history this teaching has been justified as a sacrifice of something desirable (meat) to god, not as a means of public health.

It is in the context of these Dogma and Teachings that I think my friend Andy may have made a mistake in seeing a Catholic priest regarding his homosexuality. If Andy were attempting to learn how the Church was prepared to deal its same-sex oriented parishioners, then he probably went to the right person. But, if he wanted help integrating his same-sex attraction into his life and personality then I think it's possible that he made a dreadful mistake. Priests are bound by oath to have their rational thought filtered and distorted by the Dogma and Teachings of the Church. That's their job, for heaven's sake! By comparison, Dr. Laura is not a Catholic priest (indeed the Church would not have her as a priest due to a distorted perception of her sex), but she makes a good living distorting and filtering rational thought.

Although the Catholic church is moving toward a more liberal stance in that it no longer casts out homosexuals, it still teaches that homosexual acts are sinful. The priest had to tell my friend that god calls him to abstain from the basic human need of romantic love, or to feel guilty should he indulge in a romantic relationship with another guy. This is the crux of my difficulty with institutional religion.

Either option will significantly damage Andy's psyche and cause him to suffer. Both options are not based on any logical or rational conclusion that has reason or thought behind it. Both options are based on belief, on faith, on simple assumptions that an idea is true with nothing to support it. The Church might point to the holy bible to back up their damage to Andy, but the bible's authority rests squarely on belief and the assumption that the bible is something more than an absurd ancient fiction assembled by writers from a far less enlightened age.

As many Catholics believe it is evil to eat meat on a Friday during Lent (it's no longer evil on Fridays the rest of the year!), so they believe that gay people are wicked abominations. The sin of meat comes from the Church looking after the health and welfare of it's flock, not from god. It isn't really a sin in and of itself at all. Could the sin of homosexuality be the same? Could the Church have simply been encouraging reproduction to increase the numbers of the faithful? Perhaps that would explain the Catholic sin of modern birth control methods as well.

It doesn't take much thought to see through the often circular and baseless logic of the Catholic church. It has evolved over the last 2000 years to exploit many of the weaknesses of the human mind, such as fear and fantasy. This is the insidious crime of institutional religions - they breed self preserving ideas that make no rational sense but add to the inertia of the institution. Institutional religions, refined over millennia, are now such powerful thought traps that highly trained and educated minds like that of my friend Andy are capable of believing in magic to the extent that it causes them real harm.

Laziness of the mind is what makes true abominations like Jerry Fallwell, Rev. Phelps, and Louis Farrahkan rise to power and become dangerous. The horrors of fascism were unleashed in this century because men believed without troubling to think. Hitler himself was a Christian. The Bolsheviks of Russia used faith in the tenants of Marx to bring civilization to the edge of destruction with the Cold War in exactly the same way that Fallwell uses the tenants of the bible to blind his followers and bring himself wealth and power at theie expense.

I don't think that Andy's priest had any ambitions of enslaving the world's population when they had their discussion. It was probably all very well intended. None the less, my emotional reaction to the meeting was one of sadness and disappointment. That minds as perceptive, sharp, and educated as Andy's can still be perverted from logical thought so easily and completely, gives me little hope for the future of humanity. How could he believe the priest would have provided any answers better than those he find for himself?

Consciousness is so rare and fragile. The Sun will nova and destroy Earth. Long before that it's likely an asteroid impact will render Earth unfit for human survival. Either way, mankind must get past the destructive influences of institutional religion and get on with the evolution of the mind. If not, then this precious thing, a Universe with self awareness, will be wasted.

Tuesday February 29, 2000