Why does western world hate organised religion especially the Roman Catholic Chruch?

Question

Recently many western writers/academic portrayed the Roman Catholic church as an evil organisation. I admit that the Church had dark past. But it has reformed. What's wrong being organized? Are unorganised religions better than RC? I am from Indonesia where Christians are minority. But I have to admit that Christian lays good values and ethic.

Answer 1

Complex question. There are many reasons why the Roman Catholic church finds itself in the firing line.
There can be personal reasons, due to the human failings of particular nuns or priests. Or even one's parents who can be too strict sometimes, laying too much stress on hell-fire. Nuns and priests in many countries are teachers. They are celibate and that creates tensions. Some nuns can overreact when dealing with children and be too rigid, especially in matters of emerging sexuality. Priests can abuse the sacrament of confession, and in a world where there is now pornography everywhere, they can become sex-obsessed as they have no sexual safety-valve, and this may lead to sexual intrusions that can go as far as paedophilia. There have been some well-publicised cases in the press of this over the past twenty years, and because of a desperate shortage of priests the Church has too often covered up such behaviour and sent the priests to some far-away parish with a private warning instead of sacking them. There some paedophile priests tend to repeat their crimes after a while. The scandal blows up and the Church gets the blame. When the writer has personal experience of such behaviour he/she naturally hates the Church and depicts it as evil. That is human. And the Church is human, too.
There is a tendency of priests nowadays to have a higher proportion of suppressed homosexuals than other professional groups in society. This is because there is so much stress on the naked female body in our advertising and cinema that very few males are prepared nowadays to adopt the celibate life required of a priest, except of course for those who have never been turned on by the female body, so don't feel the obligation not to marry is a burden. We also know that the dominant influence on boys deciding to become priests is their mother, dominant mothers. The dominant mother is held to be a factor in the development of suppressed homosexuality, since the boy does not dare annoy his mother by looking at other women and relating to them. The mother pushes her boy into the priesthood, and the boy later discovers his true sexuality when it is too late. He was too young and naive to understand it when he was a teenager.
This is why many Catholics are themselves questioning the need for celibacy in the priesthood, but the institutional church leadership remains unyielding on the matter.

There is also a tendency in the more fringe Protestant or Fundamentalist Protestant churches to regard the Catholic Church as the Beast of the Apocalypse, the Whore of Babylon, work of Satan or something equally nasty. You will already doubtless have seen that from some of answers you get. This is an old Protestant propaganda tradition that goes back to the religious wars of the 16-17th centuries in Europe, especially the Thirty Years War in Germany, when both sides massacred each other and the priests/preachers on each side multiplied books to show the other side were the servants of Satan. Protestant ministers are particularly resentful of the fact that the Catholic church considers that they have no mandate from God to be priests or have any priestly functions.

America is particularly full of Puritan Churches whose founders detested the Roman Church. The Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 went to settle in America and set up their own churches because they found the Anglican church in England too close to Catholicism in its ritual and beliefs. They had started reading the Jewish books of the Bible in detail, and did not understand why the Catholic and Anglican churches did not obey many Jewish rules. The Anglican leaders told them: "You are trying to play the jew" ,so they left for America in order, not to set up a free society, but a society in which people would be forced to obey many of these Old Testament practices like keeping the Sabbath holy, no dancing or football on Sundays etc. Puritan Churches are much more Old Testament, whereas the Catholic church jettisoned much of Jewish practice.

Finally for freethinkers of all kinds the Catholic church is the main target as it is the biggest and most powerful Church of them all. They would like to break the power of organized Christianity, so they challenge the most organized of the Churches.

By the way, I was brought up as a Protestant Episcopalian, but I think one should try to be fair to all religious groups.

Answer 2

I tend to think that way mostly about the christian church, and how these days it seems to be doing all it can to discredit a lot of the other religions and put fear into people's hearts. I wonder what the world would really be like if everyone accepted that not everyone will share their beliefs, and it isn't any reason to fight over, more meaningless because nothing you believe about god can be proven.

I admit they do have some positive aspects, but those are being greatly outnumbered by the bad in recent years, and more reason why I am proud to call myself Pagan than part of any of the major religions that war over the simplest things.

Answer 3

I think you have a positive and correct attitude. The Papacy is certainly not perfect but without it its the old story: 'You're gonna run to the Rock for rescue--there will be no Rock'.
I have conversed with Priests and found them to be enlightened and polite although I was not a Catholic.
The problem comes in with the bigotry and ignorance and arrogance at the bottom. They conspire together against anyone who is not one of them and often they are quite willing to hypocritically look the other way at the indisgressions of their own. Their devotion to anti-Choice is more like Roman Phallicism than anything remotely related to Jesus Christ. Every sex act isn't an act of God. And human life, does it really come full blown in an instant? Are Catholics the only women who have feelings?
If they were persecuted it would do them a world of Good. Instead they insinuate themselves into positions where they can intimidate non-Catholics.
"Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery."

Also, they smell more than other people do.

Answer 4

I think that the freedom allowed in western society as well as the education level has not only allowed people to realize that all religions are something that some man has made up in the past, but also to speak their thoughts about it.

Its 2007, and im amazed at the number of people who still believe in 2,000 year old story books as if they were true. I mean at the time they were written, these were attempts to explain the unexplainable and control the masses. Our knowledge advancement world-wide should be way beyond that. In my opinion the Soviets had the right idea to ban all religion.

Answer 5

There is no such thing as East and West. If I stand in China and point East, saying,"Look there, the sun rises from the east.", I would in fact be pointing to North America, which is considered to be Western. Similarly, if I stand in Canada or USA pointing to the West, saying,"The sun sets in the west.", I would be pointing to Asia, known as the East.

Until we can realize that the only difference between us all is simply the place from where we stand pointing, being organized or unorganized will be of no benefit. Neither being better than the other. Once we HAVE realized this, being organized or unorganized will have lost it's purpose altogether. Then we might finally see each other face to face.

Answer 6

In Europe, Australia and Canada, the trends have been toward a separation of church and state. However, I am not against a religious education class, prayer in school, Gideon Bibles dropped off at colleges and schools, or elective classes for religious minorities in their own language about their own religion and culture. Try getting that past the teacher's unions.

Meanwhile, in Canada, they have allowed for Jewish religious law and shari'a law from Islam to be enforced in civil courts. I am dead-set against ANY RELIGIOUS LAW, including Christian canonical laws, being imposed on anyone. It undermines our system of law. Why allow for the enforcement of religious law while balking at the offering of a Bible?

Answer 7

Envy!
That's the only reason I can think of. Success always invites criticism.
Peace and every blessing!

Answer 8

well i am an evangelical Christian..i really dont feel safe pointing fingers..mainly cuz i dont want to offend my God or have Him not approve of me...but i feel as if catholicism is a veil for satan...it feels as if the pagans have interfered with it...and satan is hiding behind it