I like the Vatican as a country and as a place to visit.  Nice buildings, great gift shop, and then there's always the chance you get a sneak peak at the man himself, Pope Guy.  The problem I have with the Vatican is not the buildings but the atmosphere.  No one has opened a window there in nearly two centuries.  The air reeks of old men with even older ideas belching and farting and shuffling off to some meeting that restricts human liberties even more and demeans the most basic of human desires to the level of underware valet on Madonna's "Sticky and Sweet" tour.

The latest little Papal Post It Note is out today and it admonishes those who would use in vitro fetilization and other methods of conception stimulation as the equivalents of spiritual anarchists.  The last time I read something along the line of this intellectual shallowness it was where the Apostle Paul wrote that women should sublimate themselves to men.  My advice to the Papal Post It Note and the Apostle Paul:  Ignore them both because they are so irrelevant to the 21st Century that paying attention to those directives as a way to guide your family system decisions is like installing an Invisible Fence for a Mammoth.  Great technology, wrong century.

This type of spiritual arrogance by the Church Buraucracy actually encourages members to avoid the church as a source of guidance and to create a pattern of lies and deceit around the subject.  So, in being so inflexible in one area, the Church actually creates a situation where its members must lie to get what they want or at least lie about what they are doing.  It also breeds a resentment among the more intelligent members about the level of itrusion that the Church is allowed to have as a requirement of membership.

I do not hate the Catholic Church.  What I do hate is any organization, State or Church, that imposes an arbitrary and capricious set of guidlines for my life that have as their motive increasing that organization's control and power and limiting my personal choice and freedom.  I believe in the doctrine of InFallibility but it is more about me making the best choices for myself and not about someone's desire to build an empire of  sheep.

My wife's mother has Alzheimer's and is a practicing Catholic. She would not allow a stem cell implant if her brain turned to swamp moss tomorrow morning.  Her belief is that all stem cell implants come from aborted children and she doesn't want to go to Hell ( which as of this writing is most of Africa).  She might be a bit squeemish about the stem cell thing anyway, but Catholic Radio and the daily "Going to Hell" bulletins have done nothing to open her mind up about clinical trials, new procedures, etc.  In the meantime, her husband, children, and others support financially and emotionally an absolutely stupid set of thinking processes supplied by even more clueless  Church Leadership.  The Vatican should be ashamed.  Her husband went to confession this week to ask to be forgiven for missing Mass so he could take care of her on Sunday mornings.  Of course the Priest forgave him ( as long as the tithe gets mailed in by Wednesday) but there's something just a little wacko in a religion that would make missing its services a sin even if you are performing a greater good.

If I were Pope, here's what I'd say:  Short of sleeping with your neighbor, bring children into the world anyway you can and love them as long as you can.  Sign up for clinical trials that prolong your life and the lives of others if they work.  Spend more time building houses for the poor, planting gardens for them, helping them find work, and less time inside a Cathedral  where you are praying for the world or the service to end as quickly as possible. Be kind, loving, caring, considerate, truthful, and loyal to all those that come in your path and teach others to do the same.  Let your gratitude be your worship and your service to others be your tithe.  Honor the Pope but don't get all caught up in him or the stuff around him.  He's a guy doing a job and will be replaced by another guy doing the same job when he's gone.

All Religous Institutions resist the notion that human beings should have more and more control over their present and future. The more control you have over your future, the more their  control is threatened.  The more control the individual has, the less the institution does.  Without control, the institution has no way to exist.  What happens eventually, whether it be the Catholic Church, Jim Jones, Scientology, or Harvard, the more control the institution tries to effect, the less it eventually has.  Everytime individuals start to think they become dangerous in the eyes of the institution.  Guilt, false dilemmas, inverted spiritual structures and made up sins are all tools to control the individual freedom.  So, the question as to the Church's little Propogation Post It Note is not, "Should we obey this?".  The question is:  "If we obey this does our individual freedom  increase or decrease?" In a wold where you have the choice of being subservient and checking your brain at the door as an admission ticket to Heqaven, or being free thinking, and individual choice oriented, but risking Hell, my vote is to think on your own and take the chance.

I like the Catholic Church, and all Churches for that matter in that I believe they create community for those that have none.  What I dislike is when they use that community to advance a social or political agenda that they neither have the training nor the wisdom to adminster not should be..

Enlightenment and spiritually come from: thinking for yourself and acting for yourself in the areas of your life where you matter the most.  All people act in their own self interest.   That includes the Pope as well.

My observation of the Propogation Post It Note:  The authors have Way to much time on their hands.