Let's do the timewarp again
The word for 'sin' and 'it's too bad that…' (or 'it's a pity that…') are the same in Italian ('peccato').
So when tiny toddler Lulu was asked by the local priest to make an example of a sin, tiny toddler Lulu could not come up with nothing better than 'It's too bad that on Sunday morning I have to go to church when I'd rather stay home and play.
Thirty-odd years later, I still have trouble finding an accepted universal definition of sin. Perhaps there isn't one. There are acts that obviously stand out as wrong to me, but I understand and accept that you might not agree with me.
The other day, upon hearing the news of cardinal Ratzinger's election as the new pope, my reaction was 'Nooo… Ha! Oh. Mhwaaa'.
Let me elaborate. First I instinctively felt disappointment. As if it made a difference in my life. As if it had not been over twenty years since I stopped trying to blend in by pretending to be Romish when living among Italians.
I then went all spiteful and bitter. 'Serves them right', I said, 'now, because of yet another conservative Pope even more people will abandon that brainwashing cult. I spent years feeling 'unnatural' as a gay man because of your teachings. Now see what it feels like to have millions of people turn away from you.'
However, I soon started thinking of (randomly, from the heart and totally unsupported by facts and examples, think of it like a set of – possibly exaggerated for rhetoric purposese – apocalyptic images):
- the catholic homosexuals who will experience rejection and shame – unless they practice abstinence in order to be 'accepted' by the Church;
- all the people who will expose themselves to HIV rather than use a
condom – unless they refrain from sex; - the women who will endanger their life because abortion is not an openly
available choice; - the families who will choose against contraception and go on producing child after child withouth being able to care and provide for them;
- the priests who cannot benefit of the support of a loving partner to share
their burden at the end of a working day; - the women who would do a hell of a great job in running a parish but are excluded from being ordained because of their sex;
and I could not feel anything else but sadness. Relief for having extracted myself from the grip of continuous crippling culpability, yes, but sadness for all those who still live their lives by someone else's rules without questioning.
Can someone explain to me what is bloody wrong with sex just for the sake of it?
I do not despise people who have faith. I am positive that most of them do not feel limited by it. Goodness knows I envied them and strived to be like them, but no, try as I may I just could not grasp the concept of the old bearded geezer up there checking me out twenty-four-seven and threatening to strike me down with thunder and lightning if I strayed.
Pope Benedict XVI might still surprise us all and take the Catholic Church into the future. However, judging from his condamnation of the newly-approved Spanish bill to allow homosexuals to marry and adopt, one has reasons to doubt it.
- Rent a priest dot com: 'Receive Christ's sacrament from a married catholic priest'
- Benedict XVI and Emperor Palpatine: now, you've never seen together in the same room, have you?
- Ratzinger Z [requires Flash, – and speaking Italian]