I'm an ex-Catholic...granted my family was never really religious, but either way, I did all the typical Catholic bullshit. Eating the holy cracker, doing community service so you can pretend you care about getting confirmed so you can make your mom happy because she can make your prickly Irish grandpa happy, all that.

I have an odd relationship with Christianity in general. I find a lot that is beautiful in it and in its traditions, but there's also one major problem: the Christians. If it wasn't for Christians Christianity would be great. Likewise Catholicism would be pretty great if it wasn't for all those goddamn Catholics. Specifically the kind in the robes and funny hats.

One of my earliest experiences of religious hypocrisy was being almost raped by a priest. I say "almost" because he scared the shit out of me and generally made 5 year old me highly, highly, uncomfortable. My grandma (she was a maid for a bunch of priests for the record) actually at one point told me flat out "don't be alone with that guy". It is hard to put his creepiness into words...he was a little too nice.

Anyway a few years later he got caught sodomizing a kid with downs in a public bathroom.

I apologize for putting that image into your head, but the truth hurts.

Anyway, ever see the movie Doubt? They never say the word "molest" in the movie, but you know damn well what they're talking about. Likewise my entire life I heard stories about the local priest getting caught doing something and then magically moving to a parish in the middle of rural nowhere. This sort of thing, priests abusing their power to victimize people, has been a problem for a long, long, loooooooooong time. And the fucked up thing is every single fucking person knew about it!

I mean I doubt my grandma was aware of the general rapey nature of that particular priest, but she'd been in that community long enough to know that many priests can be some twisted motherfuckers if you give them the chance.

The Vatican went through a lot of loops to try to downplay this shit. It still does to a large extent. Maybe it's the whole christian "forgiveness" thing, maybe it is them being afraid of being exposed for how utterly human they actually are, maybe it is all these things, but either way: they fucked up and innocents suffered.

Other than that I can talk about their historic support for right wing dictatorships, the inquisiton, their backwards and stupid (even by the standards of major religions) views on abortion and homosexuality and shit. But you know all that.

I give pop Francis credit though, he seems like the only one of the motherfuckers to realize Jesus probably would have hated the way they live.