The announcement by the pope that he is resigning his post due to reasons of health, mental, physical and spiritual, is almost a metaphor for the state of the church overall.
The leadership of this church has been in decline for some time now, one might say from the time it drifted away from the simple and profound teachings of a pure and honest teacher who did not feel inclined to live in a gilded palace and to wield power over the hapless. Or to torture and destroy those who opposed him.
This is a church frozen in time, trapped in the dusty tomes of its stale dogma and its certitude that it is the only path to "God". It lives within the gilded halls of a doddering patriarchy that presumes to know, which in itself is a slippery slope no matter what your belief system. Arrogance and cruelty against those who don't know can only result.
We must collectively define the type of god that allows witch burnings, the Inquisition, the barbarity of the crusades, the ruthless opposition to other faiths, to women and to gays. We must name this god that condones and protects sexual predators, those monsters who irremediably destroy the lives of innocent children.
And then, once we have defined him, we must consign him to the fires of the nether world where he was forged, so that this type of brutality in the name of God can never be localized and amassed within an institution like this again.
The leadership of this church has been in decline for some time now, one might say from the time it drifted away from the simple and profound teachings of a pure and honest teacher who did not feel inclined to live in a gilded palace and to wield power over the hapless. Or to torture and destroy those who opposed him.
This is a church frozen in time, trapped in the dusty tomes of its stale dogma and its certitude that it is the only path to "God". It lives within the gilded halls of a doddering patriarchy that presumes to know, which in itself is a slippery slope no matter what your belief system. Arrogance and cruelty against those who don't know can only result.
We must collectively define the type of god that allows witch burnings, the Inquisition, the barbarity of the crusades, the ruthless opposition to other faiths, to women and to gays. We must name this god that condones and protects sexual predators, those monsters who irremediably destroy the lives of innocent children.
And then, once we have defined him, we must consign him to the fires of the nether world where he was forged, so that this type of brutality in the name of God can never be localized and amassed within an institution like this again.