It's time for another great schism -- Catholics should abandon the church

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5728972.ece

If I were bordering on spiritial vs. non-spiritual, this article would've tipped me into the non-spiritual camp. Certainly, CUL's function is not to debate the merits of religion. However, it must be said that something is wrong when the clergy decry economic models. Should we give up our economic freedom because a man who claims to be a servant of God suggests that alternatives to capitalism are better?

As a youngster in the deep south, I got sent off to bible camp where I was taught the greatness of Christ. When I left the south, I landed in a neighborhood full of Catholics. I ended up going to a few long Catholic masses. (There was definitely a phase where I was encouraged to pick up religion.) In both the southern bible-camp setting and in the Roman Catholic mass setting, I found that people genuinely believed that clergymen had a strong connection to God and that God was speaking through them to enlighten them about the nature of the universe. This is extremely disturbing to me, particularly because we have so much evidence that members of the clergy (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) often do not serve a loving god at all.

One can't deny that Christ was a rather marvelous individual, but it's another story with the clergy. Christ serves as a form of inspiration to believers and non-believers alike. The clergy, on the other hand, cause words such as "indulgences" to pop into mind. One week we see child molesters from the church in the media. Another week, we see Holocaust deniers. Are we to believe that an organization that harbors child molesters and holocaust deniers has a direct line to God, and that God has clearly expressed displeasure with capitalism via his chosen instrument of mortgage-backed securities?

Why would God give us free-will if he wanted our will to be suppressed by the intentions of the power-seeking thugs that make up the various governments of the world? I wish people would think before they let their spirituality and politics become guided by these charlatans with titles such as "Bishop", "Cardinal", and "Pope." I suspect some of them know even less of Christ than they know of economics.

The Creator gave us brains for a reason.

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