September 7, 2021
I teach Sunday school for the Catholic church, but I am being muzzled by the powers that be (no, not that one), who don’t want me to talk about the sometimes sordid history of the church. I am not trying to turn Catholics against each other, or trying to tell young, Catholic students that they should feel shame. I just think that a more complete understanding of the history of the Catholic church is necessary for moving forward. Netflix had a very successful mini-series on the Medici, which looked at the many atrocities committed by the Popes during the Renaissance. These atrocities included murder, sex, and corruption. This series was so successful that it was followed by “The Borgias.” You can read about it in Paul Strathern’s book, “The Medici” as well as in many others. In Dante’s “Inferno,” there is a special ring in hell for the sacrilegious Popes. The book, “God’s Bankers,” details the Vatican’s complicity with the Nazis during WW II. The Church has a very complicated past.
More recently, the Catholic Church has been plagued by pedophile priests, and the subsequent coverups. There is no “Altar Boys Matter” coalition, but maybe there should be. There are systemic issues that lead to these terrible outcomes. You can’t ban history. The challenge is to discuss and understand it with context, and try not repeat it.
The Spin Doctor 