The Catholic Church

When my parents brought an infant me to be baptized at Incarnation Catholic Church in Glendale, CA, they were told that my father would have to annul his first marriage before the Catholic church would bless his second. Note, his first marriage lasted a decade and produced two children, my rad older siblings. Think about that. Through bureaucratic process the Catholic Church would have just pretended my father's first marriage had never happened, would have, by means of standard procedure, erased those ten years of life, love, and family. When my father rightly refused, he and my mother were told their marriage was not valid in the eyes of the Church. Nonetheless, I was baptized.

The first time I was ever called a fa$%ot was as a child attending Saturday morning catechism in preparation for my first communion, that process of transubstantiation in which bread and wine are meant to be the literal body of a human being who was killed over 2000 years ago.

For the last ten centuries, ordination into the priesthood has required a vow of celibacy. As of 2017, there were 414,582 Catholic priests. That's over four hundred thousand men who must refrain from one of the primary functions of the human body in order fulfill their calling. Think of how many millions that is over a thousand years.

So recently has sexual abuse perpetrated against nuns (who must also take a vow of chastity) by priests been discussed that there isn't even enough data yet to show how widespread the issue is. However, there are reports that if a nun becomes pregnant at the hands of an abusive priest, she must leave her order because, after all, "she could have said no."

As of December 2020, the US Catholic Church has paid out over 3 billion dollars to its victims of child sexual abuse, victims whose abusers have by and large been protected by the Church from public accountability.

But, sure, by all means Pope Francis—you fucking charlatan—it's the love between me and my committed partner of over four years that's the sin.

Your love is not a sin.

You don't need the Vatican (or anyone for that matter) to validate the love you share with a fellow, consenting adult.

Religious institutions of this magnitude and history exist only to keep groups of men in power, subjugate women to property, and  convince you that your relationship with god requires a middle-man distributor that demands your money and faith in exchange for divine forgiveness and the false assurance that after we die there will be some kind of eternally euphoric grand prize.

Pope Francis, and the Catholic Church as an institution, can take its poorly written book of myths, fairy tales, and parables and fuck right the fuck off.