There is so much wrong with fundamentalist religious sectors.
And what we’re now seeing out of conservative Catholicism is wrong…but from a fundamentalist point of view. How else to describe the perverse disincentives the Catholic Church is demonstrating by their move to block Joe Biden from communion?
I mean, if this were a travel brochure, it’d be selling scorpion-invested resort cabins bordering a stone-covered beach, on a sea teeming with stinging jellyfish.
OK, but I, a godless Jew, enemy of all gods everywhere, have no business writing this. (Except for the stinging jellyfish mention. As a kid, I was stung by one. It was not pleasant.) But Kathy Lollock does, and — as she often does as a regular New York Times reader-commenter — she wrote coherently and powerfully today:
To the Catholic Bishops of My Church:
I am a 76-year-old woman born and raised Catholic as well as Catholic-educated through college. It is with a saddened heart that I find it necessary to part ways with my church.
As a registered nurse, I have witnessed the consequences of denying women birth control or medically necessary abortions. I have witnessed the pain of my cousin’s family upon learning that her son was molested by a priest. And now you are considering denying communion to President Biden, who is at his core a good, decent, moral individual, because of his support for abortion rights.
No matter his personal religious beliefs, Mr. Biden represents all women’s rights to their own individuality and dignity. Most of all, he stands for the constitutional separation of church and state.
I choose to follow my president and not the man-made dogmas of the Catholic Church.
Kathy Lollock
Santa Rosa, Calif.
P.S. Two nights ago, I re-watched Spotlight.