The Limits of Tolerance

The Catholic Church and I have an understanding. I let them continue to minister to their estimated 1.131 billion adherents and in exchange I expect them to keep their God-bothering to themselves. It’s like religious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Admittedly, this has always been a tenuous relationship – they don’t care for atheists, and I’m not a fan of unabashed, arbitrarily administered social oppression. Still, we try. Unfortunately, His Holiness Joseph Ratzinger has been pushing the friendship lately, with a slate of proclamations and deeds that extend the limits of my considerable tolerance. I’m of a mind to put the Vatican On Notice, and here’s why:

1. Out loud Holocaust Denial

Look, I know that there are a percentage of nut-bags out there that insist that the Holocaust was manufactured by historians to increase sympathy for Jews. It’s not a new argument (though it never gets any more logical). Usually though, there’s an agenda: President Ahmadinejad needs to feed on anti-Semitic sentiment to distract his subjects from his ineptitude, while terror groups like Hamas and The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood espouse it as a matter of course in their fight against the Zionists. Still, one expects the Vatican (who stayed ‘neutral’ during the actual event) to have the sense be keep inflammatory rhetoric to a minimum on the subject. Reinstating excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson – who popped up on Swedish TV claiming “that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished… but none of them by gas chambers” didn’t seem like a super smart play. The Pope described the reinstatement of a Holocaust Denier as "an unforeseen mishap”.

2. An Unnecessarily Rigid Pro-life Agenda

I also know that being a staunch Catholic (or even Christian) is often synonymous with a zero tolerance pro-life stance. I’ve never been one for issuing decrees on personal issues such as these – but in any case, it’s nice to think that in exceptional circumstances even one’s most deeply held views can be flexible enough to allow reason to prevail. Let’s say, if a 9-year old girl was impregnated after her step-father raped her – she would be at least be entitled to avoid giving birth to her own siblings? Right? Well, when it happened in Brazil this month, the Catholic Church excommunicated the girl, her family and the doctors who performed her abortion. As told by Time Magazine: "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. Evidently, an open and shut case.

3. Treating Abstinence-Only Sex Education Like a Real Policy

Abstinence-Only Sex-Education is not effective at reducing anything, except the levels of Government funding going to Actual Sex Education. According to the British Medical Journal there is "no evidence" that abstinence-only sex education programs "reduce risky sexual behaviours, incidence of sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy" – a small detail that did not prevent the Bush White House from spending exhaustively on it. Now, while Bristol Palin and I agree that it’s a failed ‘policy’ – Pope Ratzinger disagrees, arguing that it has a primary role in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. He claims that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. Indeed.

Such as it is then, I’m at the end of my tether with dear Ratzinger. I’m of course not a fan of organised religion at the best of times – but the Vatican seems to be going the extra yard lately to alienate friend and foe alike. In the wake of hundreds of years of corruption and greed, decades of child abuse scandals and an ongoing refusal to join us in the 21^st century -  it makes a President wonder what it will take to bring the whole sham down.