Me vs The Catholic Church
I was born, baptized and confirmed a Catholic all at my weekly-church-going parents insistence. That said, I can take communion but I think the entire enterprise is bunk.
I sat in my neighborhood's beautiful Catholic church on Sunday morning and went along with the act. I don't sing and I don't pray but I go through the motions for my father's sake. Halfway through the mass, the reader goes up to the podium and lists off atrocities to pray for.
Normally, this is the one part of the mass I can appreciate. As a large group of people pray for starving refugees in Africa I can appreciate the service aspect of religion as a whole. At this particular Easter mass, however, I just found myself getting more and more angry.
The prayer would start out alright...
Let us pray for women around the world that their basic human rights be acknowledged..
and then halfway through it would go awry...
and let the Catholic church flourish in their attempts to convert(the heathens of)China to Catholicism.
Um excuse? I have no problem supporting women's rights around the world but what does that have to do with converting Buddhist (or Falun Gong or any other sect of) Chinese people to Catholicism? I will support no such thing. There is enough religious persecution on the Asian continent without actively creating more.
Let us pray for peace around the world...and for the victims of the current war such as Lieutenant Corporal blah blah and Major General blah blah blah...
Whoa. The real victims of war are those who wage it?!? I have NO ISSUE supporting American/British/whatever troops who are deployed in foreign countries. They are not to blame for the war itself even if they are forced to engage in it. I do have an issue saluting ONLY the Americans who are injured and not the exponentially larger group of civilians who lose their lives and livelihoods in America's continual quest for oil.
Over and over the intentions of the prayers would be noble... and then quickly break down into the active hypocrisy that is the Catholic church. It was a beautiful church, a nice enough service but I don't think I can be forced to attend another mass there again, not even for my father's sake.