…the Bleacherman has entered the stadium…
Can you believe that the Pope, the world’s defender and number one promoter of the doctrines of compassion, love and equality, has ordered the formal reprimand of Catholic nuns for spending too much time on addressing the issues of poverty and social justice and not enough time on abortion and gay marriage?
Holy Jesus Christ! Say it ain’t so.
Now I am not a Christian but from the little I know about the theology of Christianity, the issues of poverty and social justice are as close to the core of its teaching as the concerns over abortion and gay marriage. So I have to ask: How can the Vatican, the defender of doctrine, condemn those for following the basic tenants of their religion? Is this what our world has become? Has religion taken on a new more politically charged focus than it should? How in the name of decency can the Vatican abandon critical efforts to ease the suffering of its flock? Has God gone blind and deaf and sold his soul to those who seek political advantage over religious needs?
I offer Matthew 5:43-45: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Are you listening right wing talk radio? You claim the pedestal of religion but you know nothing of the religion that you wear on your lapel next to the American flag.
I believe that the time has come for us to talk less about family values and spend much more time talking about the totality of protecting and promoting basic human values. We need to stop cataloguing, categorizing and ultimately excluding people because they do not come out of some Orwellian cookie-cutter, one size fits all life style social engineering machine. We have for whatever perverse reason invented this picture of the perfect nuclear family. We have established this narrow, restricted definition of a household that by default condemns and criticizes those that voluntarily or driven by an adverse set of circumstances live a different life style.
We need to stop inventing and promoting as fact the concept of something being “perfect.” Perfect is a subjective assessment and the term should be avoided whether applying it to theological doctrine, political philosophy or the makeup of a family structure. A family can be defined in many different ways and composed of many different components and does not have to reflect a household where there is a white daddy who is the self-proclaimed master of the universe, a white mommy who is subservient to her husband and lives to serve, bear and raise the two perfectly behaved children and tend to the quintessential family dog named Spots who is often caged on top of the family station wagon and driven down the expressway at high speeds.
I’m sorry Rick Santorum but you need to take your perfect nuclear family and find some abandoned missile silo and take up residence there. How dare you challenge and condemn those who choose to live a different life style. Who in the hell are you to make such judgment? Who are you to day what is right and wrong? Didn’t YOUR God reserve that right for himself?
You and your kind are an embarrassment to the religion you say you support. Take Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman, the Assistant Majority Leader and a close ally of GOP Governor Scott Walker, who has introduced a bill that would require the State of Wisconsin to officially deem single parenthood to be a “contributor” to child abuse and neglect and to put the same into statutory laws of the state. Yes, being a single parent contributes to child abuse like two parent families never do.
The time has come to stop defining marriage in terms of a specific religious or social doctrine. The time has come to stop promoting family values and expand the calling to human values that are inalienable to all of mankind regardless of marital status or family structure. The time has come to stop demanding that we co-opt and sign in on one specific set of religious values.
Do you really think that Jesus, be he of human flesh or a product of divine spirit, would accept the rationale that poverty and social justice should be ignored in favor of concentrating solely on the issues of abortion and gay marriage.
When did any of you goody-two-shoes have a conversation with God who gave you the right to establish such priorities. The Pope needs to take a good hard look at his own vanity and stick to promoting a God that is just, fair and far reaching. He needs to work to end all evils; not those that make good political and partisan theater. He needs to stop ignoring child abuse in his houses of God.
Human values must be our focus.
…the Bleacherman has left the stadium not praising the Lord today….
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