Open letter to Bishop Jenky. Re: Obama, Hitler and Stalin remarks. [View all]

[20score]

Bishop Jenky,

I grew up in a Catholic home, went to a Catholic grade school and for a couple of years was an altar boy. Having been forced to attend church in my younger years, I assumed my children would feel relief at staying home on Sundays. I was wrong. My two oldest would beg me to take them to church, actually saying, “You got to go when you were my age!” So, I explained that the Church – and I emphasized the Church, not the lay Catholics – were backward in their thinking. About birth control, women, gays - and that when priests did awful things, they protected the Church at all costs, and made the wrong things they did, much, much worse.

I also explained that the most conservative, most fanatical in the Church hierarchy were responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, aiding Hitler during the Holocaust and numerous other atrocities throughout history. I told them that even though most of those things were far in the past, some of the fanatics in the Church still interpreted morality though the eyes of reactionaries that are incapable of compassion and logical thought. I did add that there were many in the Church, priests and nuns that helped the poor and hungry, stood up against immoral wars, etc., and that they were a credit to the Church and humanity as a whole. But we still weren’t going, at least until they all acted Christ-like and not ‘Christian.’

My children are now in their early twenties and I showed them what you said the other day about Obama, Hitler and Stalin. Their reaction – “Wow, it’s worse than I thought it was.” I responded with, “Me too.”

This after years of defending the Church, telling people, “No it’s the evangelicals that are nuts, the Catholics don’t think like that.” After the Vatican blaming ‘60’s liberals for the priest’s pedophilia, after the embarrassing reaction to the phony birth control controversy and now your disgusting remarks, I can no longer defend the Church.

At least I know positively, that I did the right thing leaving it.