The Communion/abortion pronouncements make Catholic leaders look like idiots.

It was a blast growing up Catholic. Knowing that we were members of the only true church and the only people who could get into heaven made us feel superior and cocky.

Whenever we were on the losing side of an argument with kids of different religions, we would just end it by saying they would burn forever in hell—no matter how good of a life they lived.

By contrast, we knew we could shoplift, vandalize property, swear, smoke, drink, and think impure thoughts and still be saved because we could go to confession and have the black spots removed from our souls. A quick Act of Contrition mumbled out, or even said silently, had the same effect of cleansing us of sin, and so we weren’t afraid of eternal damnation, and thus we went blissfully about being young jerks.

By the seventh grade, though, we had it with the propaganda and the nutty rules. At that young age even we realized that it was insanely and sinfully unfair that kids who were in different religions because of choices their parents made would burn forever in hell. So we started ditching Sunday mass, and from that point on, none of us were really Catholic.

It’s a good thing. Because if we were, we’d be storming the Vatican and archdiocese headquarters with pitchforks, torches and sledge hammers, screaming that the church’s leaders are hypocrites, liars and vilest of pigs.

And we’d be screaming that people who subject themselves to any religion’s authoritarian rules are hopeless, pathetic dopes who aren’t worthy of freedom, and who jeopardize our freedom by mindlessly submitting to those rules.

The latest garbage from the Catholic Church comes from its outposts in Colorado and New Mexico. A bishop in Colorado Springs has taken the pro-choice/Communion controversy to a new extreme, saying that Catholics who back politicians who support abortion rights, gay marriage, stem cell research and euthanasia should not take Communion.

In New Mexico, a Catholic high school, apparently prompted by extremists, has fired a teacher with 33 years of service to the school because he told students they wouldn’t be damned to hell for missing one Sunday mass.

Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs has issued the most insulting statement. Not only has he said that Catholics who support abortion rights candidates can’t take Communion, but that they must publicly recant their “sin” before they can again receive the host.

“It might take a public recantation,” the rule-loving Sheridan said in a recent interview.

Well, here’s news for Sheridan:
It won’t take a public recantation because most of your flock probably thinks you’re an idiot and they don’t listen to you anyway.

Why?

Because this is America, the land of the free, not some feudal, medieval society where political and religious leaders use rules, authority and myths to keep people down.

We’re not modern-day Saudi Arabia where people are stoned to death for breaking religious rules. We’re not sixteenth century England where people are beheaded for minor theft. We’re not a people who take seriously the pronouncements of religious bureaucrats, most of whom have never had a real job.

We’re people who think for ourselves.
Or we should be, anyway.

In Albuquerque, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe fired a St. Pius High School teacher because a student complained about his teaching.

And what did the teacher, Michael Fitzgerald, tell the kid?

That no single act would send a person to hell because God looks at “the fundamental orientation” of a person. If you constantly strive to do good, you will get to heaven, even though you might stumble quite a few times along the way.

Most people would probably agree with that.

But the idiot bureaucrats in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe couldn’t see the benefit of that common sense view, and so they fired Fitzgerald.

Archbishop Michael Sheehan has obviously forgotten the story of Mary Magdalene, the thief on the cross and the other examples of God’s immense capacity for forgiveness.

But that’s typical of religious bureaucrats. They really don’t care about saving our souls, they just want our mindless obedience—and our money.

So give them neither. Stop contributing to the Catholic Church and to any other religion you belong to. Let the bureaucrats get real jobs like the rest of us.

Don’t listen to their stupid pronouncements, whether they’re a priest, archbishop, rabbi, ayatollah, minister or mullah. Tell them that religious oppression has no place in America because we are free men, free women and free thinkers who are disgusted by their efforts to control us.

And tell them this:

The torches have been lit and the pitchforks are being passed out.

And not even a public recantation will save them.