Sociopathy as Virtue

Chicago Bishop of the Catholic Church Cardinal George says if his hospitals and other public services organizations have to toe the line in allowing their female employees' availability of contraception healthcare insurnace benefits, he'll close down those businesses rather than compromise his morals. He insists the Catholic Church has the right to dictate the choices, preferences, needs and activities of every one of its employees -- and by extension, those businesses' clients -- who work and live within his sphere of dominance. He such capricious domination over the free will, exercise of Constitutionally protected rights and the pursuit of happiness as his and his parishoners' freedom to worship.According to him, his freedom of religion means he can deny as he chooses everybody who falls within his fiefdom whatever life saving, life changing, pain alleviating, damage preventative, good physical and mental health therapy his interpretation of texts that could never have prophesied such needs dictates. In the name of his all powerful, all seeing, all encompassing, loving and compassionate boss.

Pure, unmitigated horse crap. The Catholic Church has to follow the rules of business in the public square: Period! Just because they and corollary religious institutions have enjoyed a pass at the expense of general public freedom from religion for 'way too long doesn't give the Bishop or any other religionists the right to claim further special rights in offering public services in the public arena. Indeed, the Bishop is correct in that his freedom of religion is absolute only in the specially designated sanctuaries where he's free to dictate behavior to his heart's content. In the public square, however, his freedom to worship ends at the tip of any and every employee's nose, Catholic or not, religious or not, believer or not. The Church has no right to exemption from public safety, the general welfare or any other corporate responsibilities universally incumbent on business institutions. The Church has no right to dictate choices or behavior among non-believers outside of any designated sanctuaries whatsoever. The Bishop is executing yet another power grab over governance of the general public, true to form, as it is wont to do. But, it ain't gonna work, not any more, not no how. So, he plays by the rules as everybody else, or he has to excuse himself from the activities that compels him, for the good of everybody in the public arena, to otherwise compromise his antisocial compulsions. Threatened with actually having to act responsibly among the general public, he oh-so-compassionately threatens to take his baseball bat and go home. He doesn't hint that he'd sell the institutions for fair value in the public marketplace, but he'll deprive all the recipients of services he pretends to care about outright just to prove how righteous he is. He's a twisted, rigid, sociopathic, magical thinking despot.

Not to be outdone, the Archbishop of New York, John Sentamu, has joined voices with Catholic archbishops Vincent Nichols and Peter Smith, president and vice-president of the bishops conference in the UK declaring in a letter read this week in all the masses in England and Wales that "Changing the legal definition of marriage would be a profoundly radical step. Its consequences should be taken seriously now."

These guys have a vested interest in maintaining their grip on the masses, wanting to extend their reach beyond their flocks into the general public without regard of the wishes the non-Anglican public. These pronouncements are in absolute opposition to both history and current reality. In fact, these Bishops' position is just so much more self loathing generating, guilt inspiring, confusion inducing, anti-social prejudice based on conviction instead of fact, assertion in place of reality, with opinion replacing proof. These anarchic, anachronistic theocrats ignore the history within their own church that celebrated same sex unions complete with official liturgy through the 17th century, some two hundred years after James II order to induce the Anglican Ecclisiastical order and attitude into his commissioned translations. These guys just continue to make things up, in the long held tradition, as it suits them in their never ending grab for power and the hearts and minds of everybody they can fool, convince, intimidate, coerce, manipulate or cajole. Yet, the British state continues to humour them, encourage them and subsidize them as if they had any socially redeeming value that could not be accomplished without all that magical mumbo jumbo, confusion contrary to reality or all those other trappings and baggage they'd have us pretend doesn't exisit or are merely positive.

(c)2012 Nathan Garcia. All international rights reserved.