NYT Ad: Quit The Catholic Church

CMR ^ | March 9, 2012 | Patrick Archbold

[NYer]

The New York Times published an ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation which calls for nominal and liberal Catholics to abandon the Church.

The ad asks "Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? " and states "No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith." [Full Text Below.]

It goes without saying that the brave brave NYT would never accept and publish an ad criticizing Islam in the same way. But leaving aside the obvious cowardice and their disgraceful perfunctory anti-Catholicism, I think the ad is good. If that is what you believe, get out.



Full Text

Dear ‘Liberal’ Catholic:

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again?

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith. As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings. Your continuing Catholic membership, as a “liberal,” casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?)

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care. As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions? The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies. The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church’s announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church’s “rights of conscience” above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has “conscience rights” to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics.

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go?

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.

As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass.

Very truly,

Annie Laurie Gaylor
Co-President
Freedom From Religion Foundation

ht Gateway Pundit

[KingNo155]

We Shall Never Surrender http://youtu.be/shRLCaNreFE

[Chode]

feh...

[Cicero]

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club?

Well . . . if you really want to know . . . it's because we think that good is better than evil, and with God's help we try to follow what He wills.

[DuncanWaring]

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

[maddogtiger]

It never was about Rush or contraceptives, just about destroying Christianity. Wake up America.

[cripplecreek]

“Various are the pleas and arguments which men of corrupt minds frequently urge against yielding obedience to the just and holy commands of God.”

-Reverend George Whitfield

[Berlin_Freeper]

According to the Census of the 2011 Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook), the number of Roman Catholics of the world is about 1.181 billion at the end of 2009 (At the end of 2008, it was about 1.166 billion).

According to the CIA Factbook, the five countries with the largest number of Catholics are Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, the USA, and Italy.

[chimera]

The premise is correct. Everyone at one time or another must choose which Master they will serve. The Lord himself said no one can serve two masters. Those who put out this ad and those who choose to follow them will choose to serve a Master other than the Lord. As long as they understand they are rejecting God then they are free to make that choice, God allows them that freedom. But they will also have to understand the consequences of that choice. As for me and my house, I choose to serve the one true Master and Lord.

[Alberta's Child]

I actually agree with this ad 100%.

Anyone who doesn't accept what the Catholic Church stands for should find something else to do with their time. There is no place in any organization for disruptive malcontents.

If I was a Boy Scout and I hated the outdoors, nobody would think twice about telling me that I'd be better off doing something else.

[wintertime]

Freedom From Religion Foundation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There is no philosophical vacuum called “Freedom from Religion”. Every sentient being has a religious worldview. It is either godless or God-centered. This is axiomatic.

Also...There is almost nothing in this life that is religiously neutral in content or consequences. This is one of the major reasons why government should be as limited as possible and most civic services should be provided by the free market.

[TASMANIANRED]

Too bad they didn’t leave 30 years ago.

They would have done less damage.

[Jacquerie]

Agree.

The real point of the advertisement is that the tenets of a political party are mutually exclusive with those of Christianity! One cannot be members in good standing in both the democrat party and the Catholic Church. Our Presidential candidates should use this in their ads.

[cripplecreek]

Those who can see past the obvious anti Catholic/Jewish biases of the revolutionary war era may appreciate the pro resistance sentiment expressed in the following. The anti Catholic/Jewish sentiments expressed here are regrettable but I remind everyone that today we are much stronger together.

The Rights of the Colonists by Samuel Adams The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting. November 20, 1772

An Election Sermon by Simeon Howard, A.M. Sermon preached to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, in Boston, June 7, 1773

Many more documents and papers here.

Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American History

[FlingWingFlyer]

The homosexuals and pedophiles are on a roll. They’ve become pretty bold and obnoxious since the so called “courts” awarded them protected species status.

[WeatherGuy]

The homosexuals and pedophiles are on a roll.

..and they know where they'll find a receptive audience - the New York Times.

[redgolum]

Except then the elite were for the Revolution to secure freedom. Now they are for the revolution to destroy freedom.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The ad asks "Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club?"

This is going to have the exact opposite effect of the one they desire.

[cripplecreek]

We had two sets of elites then. The loyalists backing the British and the Patriots backing freedom.

[mimaw]

Hells Bible only too happy to print this ad. I didn't realize Wi atheist Annie Laurie crazy ugly bitch had the kind of money to run this ad. Wonder if it was Soros assisted or perhaps NYT contributed it to the cause? Please do leave all you delusional liberal and nominal Catholics so our churches can be disinfected and exorcised.

[Venturer]

I liked the cartoon. Actually if they swallowed they wouldn’t need abortion contraception or birth control.