It took the Catholic Church almost four hundred years to admit it was wrong and
apologize for the persecution of Galileo.
In 2000 Pope John Paul issued an apology for the Church’s role in the
persecution of Jews; the mass murder of heretics; the Crusades; and their
various manifestations of religious intolerance.
Over the past ten years the Southern Baptist Church apologized for their endorsement of slavery. The Lutheran church apologized for Martin Luther’s vicious anti-Semitic screeds. The Methodist church apologized for a preacher that led a massacre of Native Americans during the Civil War. The Mormons apologized for their sect’s murder of innocent settlers in 1857 at the Mountain Meadows Massacre inUtah .
What all these apologies have in common is they came between 400 and 140 years after the fact. The victims of those atrocities and wrongful persecutions are all dead and benefit not a sou from their crocodile tears of guilt or admission of wrong doing in the name of their god. Apologies to the long dead wronged fixes nothing, purges the guilt of their religious delusions and fanaticism not a bit. Whether it is heart felt admission and request for forgiveness, or if it’s a cheap throw away, a ploy, a transparent PR play for some kind of redemption and acceptance I don’t know, and I don’t care.
But what is clear is that they haven’t learned a damn thing.
- The majority of Christian sects continue to condemn homosexuality as a sin, as a deviant behavior of choice and relegate them to second class citizenship.
- They continue to subjugate women to the whims of male dominated denominations; continue to invoke ancient biblical precepts to exercise control over women’s reproductive systems.
- They continue to sentence to death by AIDS third world peoples by condemning condoms.
Over the past ten years the Southern Baptist Church apologized for their endorsement of slavery. The Lutheran church apologized for Martin Luther’s vicious anti-Semitic screeds. The Methodist church apologized for a preacher that led a massacre of Native Americans during the Civil War. The Mormons apologized for their sect’s murder of innocent settlers in 1857 at the Mountain Meadows Massacre in
What all these apologies have in common is they came between 400 and 140 years after the fact. The victims of those atrocities and wrongful persecutions are all dead and benefit not a sou from their crocodile tears of guilt or admission of wrong doing in the name of their god. Apologies to the long dead wronged fixes nothing, purges the guilt of their religious delusions and fanaticism not a bit. Whether it is heart felt admission and request for forgiveness, or if it’s a cheap throw away, a ploy, a transparent PR play for some kind of redemption and acceptance I don’t know, and I don’t care.
But what is clear is that they haven’t learned a damn thing.
- The majority of Christian sects continue to condemn homosexuality as a sin, as a deviant behavior of choice and relegate them to second class citizenship.
- They continue to subjugate women to the whims of male dominated denominations; continue to invoke ancient biblical precepts to exercise control over women’s reproductive systems.
- They continue to sentence to death by AIDS third world peoples by condemning condoms.
- They continue to deny the reality of climate change
claiming god wouldn’t permit his planet to be destroyed by his creations.
-They continue to perpetrate the lie of Creationism which
flies in face of overwhelming scientific evidence and modernity.
-The Catholic hierarchy continues to pay lip service to
condemnation of massive priestly pedophilia, engaging in a culture of cover-up
and denial ten years after a papal promise to end it.
Will their apologies and corrective adjustments to these crimes against humanity ever be forth coming? Oh, yes... it will come eventually. When they can no longer justify with myth that which science has proven; when the evidence for their failure to reason is blatantly obvious, so heinously horrific, and widely condemned; when their unsupportable apologetics falls on the deaf ears of the millions of apostates who have come to reality, civility and science; when their lies and denials and devotion to myth becomes more of a burden than they can bear in the face of truth - then the apologies will flow.
The only question is when: four hundred years, one-hundred and forty years, fifty years? No sense holding our collective breaths. We are all their victims and we will be long dead before it comes. If history tells us anything religionists don’t relinquish their apologies readily. Their lack of honesty just doesn’t permit it.
Will their apologies and corrective adjustments to these crimes against humanity ever be forth coming? Oh, yes... it will come eventually. When they can no longer justify with myth that which science has proven; when the evidence for their failure to reason is blatantly obvious, so heinously horrific, and widely condemned; when their unsupportable apologetics falls on the deaf ears of the millions of apostates who have come to reality, civility and science; when their lies and denials and devotion to myth becomes more of a burden than they can bear in the face of truth - then the apologies will flow.
The only question is when: four hundred years, one-hundred and forty years, fifty years? No sense holding our collective breaths. We are all their victims and we will be long dead before it comes. If history tells us anything religionists don’t relinquish their apologies readily. Their lack of honesty just doesn’t permit it.
They don't apologize until long after they risk losing anything by doing so. They'll cling to their intolerance of gays, subjugation of women, suppression of science, etc, as long as they can keep the $$$ rolling in and maintain their power over people. When it becomes socially unacceptable and financially untenable to maintain these positions they'll change them, and a few centuries later they'll apologize to the descendents of those harmed by their behavior.
ReplyDeleteThey apologize but they never actually learn anything. They just keep doing the same thing over and over again, figuring they can apologize later. They feel bad for what someone in their sect did centuries ago, they don't recognize that they ought to feel awful for what they, themselves, are doing today.
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing sincere about these apologies. They are in my view just as you stated public relations ploys. The church in general is like a chameleon, transforming and reforming its doctrines and beliefs to remain somewhat relevant in society.
ReplyDeleteIt's about money, power, and control of the masses.
What's ironic is that they all claim to be in touch with the source of the one, true, unchanging moral law. All I can say is that their communication channels must be very error-prone.
ReplyDeleteThe wound caused by Christianity on the historical processes started with the destruction of the Hellenic Culture. It
ReplyDeletecontinued with the crusades both against muslims and against christians. Then with the reformation and counter reformation
it transformed itself into the various inquisitions and terrorized Europe first, and then gradually in varying degrees the
entire world.
The ravaging of Europe first during the establishment of Christianity, secondly in the wake of the Crusades, and then by the inquisitions and the witch hunts. A ravaging that lasted for the better part of two thousand years.
The loss of cultural diversity, of knowledge, of alternate ways of living, the loss to our literary, scientific,
architectural, spiritual inheritance has barely been recognized.
It's a wound so large, so painful, so gaping that few people and societies in the west have begun to recognize it, let
alone deal with it. So, instead of real history we have these fantasies about saints, miracles, the monk keeping alive the
spark of knowledge. Instead of dealing with it, Europe has been trying retreat from reality. Europe needs to recognize itself, it's villains and it's martyrs.
Well said Hump, the crimes against humanity that religion and its adherents have inflicted on humanity cannot be effaced by the self-serving utterances of those who want to maintain temporal power over the minds of the masses of women and men. The absurd dogmas,superstition and myths- virus-that poisons the mind must be resisted wtth reason and critical thinking..
ReplyDelete@Champak - thanks for your comment. I had not thought about the damage done to cultural diversity by the crusades and inquisitions quite that way before.
ReplyDeletePope Benedict declared yesterday that using condoms is no longer a sin so long as they are used to prevent disease and not for birth control. What a douche bag! Hump, you're right. The change and apologies are always too little too late. I don't imagine an apology to the tens of thousands who have died of AIDS as result of the RCC's former condom policy will be forthcoming anytime soon.
Mmmmm... sorry to say so, but ... YAWNNNNN! Look I've been atheist since I was 13, but during the circumvolutated (not sure of the exact word, spelling please?) years of my already long life (I'm nearing 60), I've come to realize that it is very easy to pigeon-slot people the very way you do.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it does nothing good to humankind nor even does it do justice to reality and facts. Especially nothing positive/constructive towards enlightening people trapped in the religious blakhole of idiocy and ignorance.
In my experience, which spans from a location/cultural point of view of living years in Mali (i.e. Africa, where I was born), then France, Germany, France again, then Australia, then Japan, then USA, then France yet again, I can safely say that idiots exist in every corner of this planet.
But fortunately, reasonably astute ppl also exist everywhere. And in nearly every culture - that is cultures not completely brainwashed by ideological agendas - be they religious or atheist: Stalin and Polpot were ferocious atheists but were as fucking stupid and ignorant as Bush the First and Bush the Second (and other religious wackos such as the long line of cretinous Popes who plagued Europe for centuries).
Still, if you look at the overal picture of this planet today, in the early 21st century, what do you see? What "I" see is so fucking obvious that surely anyone with a postivie IQ can see it too: Europe, i.e. 27 countries totalling close to 400 million people is nearly totally agnostic. Every church in Europe is either closed down for good or only opens 3 times a year, in a symbolic fashion - whenever someone gets married or kicks the bucket.
Whereas USA is still plagued with millions of religious wacko fucktards operating under the label of "born again fucheads" - with churches super-busy with attendance of cretinous fucktards singing "oh-I-love-my-jesus-dildo".
How does this place USA in the "enlightment contest"? Like Europe in the dark ages of 1300/1400, at best.
In other words, the most diverse place on earth (and the one with the longest history of religious conflicts) is now the place where no religious fuckheads exist any longer.
Maybe USA should wake the fuck up and learn something from EU? After all, since the white folks who invaded North America and butchered just about all the Indian natives were ex-Europeans, one might assume they could learn a thing or 2 from their European ancestors mistakes and even more so from their own even worse inhuman (an inhumane) booboos?