“The Faith, practice, and church order of the Roman Catholic Church; adherence to the forms of Christian doctrine and practice which are generally regarded as Catholic.” Candidly, I grew up with a tad of disdain for this church. For starters, my father, his siblings, and parents were Spanish Basque. When they immigrated to this country, even though they were Catholic, they did not attend weekly mass. When my father’s mother died, the local priest refused to conduct the burial rites and “bless” her because of this. After that, my father decried the church, insisting that religion gave people a false sense of security and a false sense of righteousness. To add to that, my next-door neighbors were a household where the father would yell at and hit his children 6 days a week except Sunday when he went to church and was a holy man. Ultimately, I am a freedom lover, I do not want to be told what to do or what to think by anyone, and I question authority.

Isn’t this church an enormous business and system of patriarchy and oppression with a grip on the Supreme Court? In my view, it seems to be based on accumulating as many followers as possible for power, wealth, dominance and control. Instilling in people deep-seated fear, advocating abdicating authority over one’s body using no birth control and/or abortion, insisting to commune and be in favor with God that going to church is mandatory, insisting priests can only be male, allowing rampant pedophilia and perpetration against innocent children and adolescents, etc., etc., etc., equal an unhealthy system of dominion. The God this “Christian” system professes to adhere is mean, punitive, and horrifying; completely diametric to the loving, inclusive, empowering Beloved, Divine, God I know and subscribe to.