This Charming Man

The Catholic Church has spent two mil­len­nia de­mo­niz­ing hu­man sex­ual­ity to a de­gree un­matched by any oth­er in­sti­tu­tion, declar­ing the most ba­sic, healthy, ma­ture, and con­sen­su­al be­hav­iors taboo. In­deed, this or­ga­ni­za­tion still op­pos­es the use of con­tra­cep­tion: pre­fer­ring, in­stead, that the poor­est peo­ple on earth be blessed with the largest fam­ilies and the short­est lives. As a con­se­quence of this hal­lowed and in­cor­ri­gi­ble stu­pid­ity, the Church has con­demned gen­er­ations of de­cent peo­ple to shame and hypocrisy—or to Ne­olith­ic fe­cun­di­ty, pover­ty, and death by AIDS.              

  

Add to this in­hu­man­ity the ar­ti­fice of clois­tered celiba­cy, and you now have an in­sti­tu­tion —one of the wealth­iest on earth— that pref­er­en­tial­ly at­tracts ped­erasts, pe­dophiles, and sex­ual sadists in­to its ranks, pro­motes them to po­si­tions of au­thor­ity, and grants them priv­ileged ac­cess to chil­dren. Fi­nal­ly, con­sid­er that vast num­bers of chil­dren will be born out of wed­lock, and their un­wed moth­ers vil­ified, wher­ev­er Church teach­ing holds sway—lead­ing boys and girls by the thou­sands to be aban­doned to Church-​run or­phan­ages on­ly to be raped and ter­ror­ized by the cler­gy. Here, in this ghoul­ish ma­chin­ery set to whirling through the ages by the op­pos­ing winds of shame and sadism, we mor­tals can fi­nal­ly glimpse how strange­ly per­fect are the ways of the Lord.

Sam Harris.

(Picture: Wojtyla blessing notorious pedophile Marcial Maciel.)