The Emperor Palpatine Has No Clothes

Look. I don’t care, honestly, if you believe in God. Or any gods. Or any spiritual force that’s intangible and invisible. I don’t believe, personally, and if you come around here expecting to convert me, I’ll challenge you to back up your claims with some extraordinary evidence. That’s basically how it works around here on this blog, and probably on most atheist blogs. But there’s one thing I will not brook, and that’s apologetics about easily the most vicious, pernicious, self-serving and tenebrous organization that has ever darkened this planet: the Catholic Church.

Why would I be intolerant of a group of people that, in their heart, are either misguided or deluded, you ask? I’m not talking about the “sheep” — the foot soldiers of the Catholic army whose only purpose in the organization is to have their wallets sponged. I’m talking about the church, not the followers, you understand. Because the clergy, the ecclesiasty, all the way up to the Pope his fucking self, are afflicted with a terrible rot that comes from the institution itself. Regardless of what beliefs, what mythology they use to ensnare the people, the institution itself is shiftless and power-hungry. It owns a country, for FSM’s sake; a palace full of gold! And it thinks it’s going to save the world by denying condoms to Africa during an AIDS epidemic. Its one trick up its sleeve for conversion is teaching that sexuality is unnatural, and that leads to major psychological issues in its clergy. Just look at these headlines! Update: forgot to point out that all are from the last month, no less!

How utterly tone-deaf must you be to the mounting crescendo of wailing from the thousands of victims finally, after decades and possibly centuries, being given voice?

Apparently this tone-deaf:

That last one is probably my favorite bit of retardery. It’s not that Satan’s behind the pedophilia and rampant abuse, OH NO, it’s that Satan’s behind all the vicious vicious lies and rumors! That tricksy Devil is telling lies to the media about us! We’re totally pure and innocent; in the meantime keep giving us money!

Don’t even get me started on Bill Donahue. That wretched asshat can go fuck himself. Would that there was a hell, so he, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and every other bloviating religious vulture could all be tortured together for their crimes against decency. It’s such a shame they’ll simply rot in the ground rather than being meted out any eternal reward for their sins.

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The Emperor Palpatine Has No Clothes
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15 thoughts on “The Emperor Palpatine Has No Clothes

  1. 2

    the most vicious, pernicious, self-serving and tenebrous organization that has ever darkened this planet: the Catholic Church.

    I would question that – it has plenty of competition, and there are several secular governments in the last century that probably had more blood on their hands than the Catholic church over its entire history.

  2. 3

    Right on brother.

    The last few weeks of reports of abuse, reports of cover-ups are appalling. The Vatican spokesmen (no women, of course) and the pope himself denigrating the outrage leaves me spluttering with anger.

  3. 4

    “there are several secular governments in the last century that probably had more blood on their hands than the Catholic church over its entire history”

    How many of them did it while maintaining that they were the exemplar for the world and the source of moral goodness?

  4. 6

    Paul S: I would have thought the running for organizations that have produced bloodshed on the order of the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition, buggers children daily and covers it up/gets away with it, has spread to cover the entire planet, and exists to this day after several centuries to continue to chip away at human progress, would have been a very small field indeed.

    I picked the words you quoted very carefully. If you’re doing the Stalin/Hitler thing as J Ro suggests, understand that while they were cancers on humanity that were caught in time and stopped (though not without doing some major damage first), the Catholic Church is one that has metastatized and carefully and slowly crept to infect every corner of this planet with little pushback over these centuries.

    Evidence is pretty high that Hitler was a God-fearing Catholic, though, so I have my doubts that’s what you meant. Perhaps you could you point me to which secular organizations you’re referring, so we can discuss it without unnecessary strawmen?

  5. 8

    Regardless of my own beliefes, which I’ve mentioned before and have no further desire to discuss, I have to agree. The church as an institution is my main problem with religion in general. Human beings are falable, that’s just fact. For such an organization to try to rule the world under the guise of religious righteousness is just wrong on so many levels. Thinking of the crimes the church has committed in the name of their own religion, or claiming they did it for the sake of god just makes my blood boil. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the so very many children who’s lives have been ruined by many of these so called “holy men.” They should be strung up by their nuts and left to the crows, not protected by the very institution that should be protecting their child victims.
    There are so few Christians who actually are Christians it infuriates me.
    *growl*snort* I gotta go wash something …

  6. 10

    The Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Maoist China, even Pol Pot’s Cambodia – all of these have certainly been far more destructive than the Catholic church ever was. I think that the estimated deaths from the Inquisition over centuries are roughly 40,000 – 50,000. This is a horrible crime, but what’s really scary is that it’s actually fairly small in scale compared to what some modern regimes have done in a much, much shorter time frame. Modern regimes, like churches and kingdoms in earlier periods of history, always claim that their persecutions are necessary and just.

    My point is not that the Catholic church has not done horrible things, but that it can not realistically be called the most vicious and pernicious institution ever. I would say that an authoritarian regime in any medium to large country is much more dangerous overall than the Catholic church.

    (I should also add that any large organization will tend to abuse its power and worry most about protecting its own sooner or later. This trait is nothing specific to the Catholic church or religious organizations in general.)

  7. 11

    If we look at the numbers of people who have died from AIDS, the number of orphans it has left behind, and the number of women who have been tortured emotionally by watching their children die from a preventable illness, then the Catholic Church indeed wins the gold medal for fucked-up sick masochism.

    Add in the church’s long history of repression, deliberate cultural impoverishment, and overall emotional damage through guilt and sexual abuse. These twisted, self-deluded, asshats are going for platinum.

  8. 12

    Let’s not forget that, while the non-theistic regimes mentioned may have a high score in murder count, they didn’t murder BECAUSE OF NON-THEISM. They murdered because they were despotic regimes, controlled by dogmatic faith in their leaders.

    Also, they haven’t stuck around for centuries after their crimes have been laid bare — they were quashed as rapidly as the rest of humankind could manage. Those cancers were excised. The cancer that is the Catholic Church goes on repressing basic life-saving scientific advances like condom use and medicine, and repressing basic human rights for women, and violating your children, all while, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, holding themselves as the arbiters of all that is good and moral in this world. And all the while, people are busy apologizing for them and claiming they’re “not that bad”.

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