The U.S. Catholic Church Tells Jesus To Take His Teachings And Fuck Off.

Did you know that, whether you are Catholic or not, every single American taxpayer gives money to the Catholic Church?  How's that for the separation of church and state?

I'm going to be talking a bit about Obama's contraception mandate here, so if you don't know about it, I suggest you go look it up.  In essence, Obamacare forces employers to offer free birth control to their employees, which created a bit of a holy storm when Catholic organizations (who are notorious for being anti-contraception) realized that this included them.  The president compromised, putting the responsibility on the insurance companies and not the religious institutions, and a majority of Catholic higher-ups liked his new plan.  But not everyone.

Tuesday on MSNBC, Cardinal Timothy Dolan (pictured above), the Archdiocese of New York, said this about the mandate on Martin Bashir's show:

“If these mandates kick in, we’re going to find ourselves faced with a terribly difficult decision as to whether or not we can continue to operate.  As part of our religion — it’s part of our faith that we feed the hungry, that we educate the kids, that we take care of the sick. We’d have to give it up, because we’re unable to fit the description and the definition of a church given by — guess who — the federal government.”

Earlier that morning on CBS, Dolan declared that the government was "strangling" the church just before taking the president's compromise to an extreme in order to scare Catholics:

“They tell us if you’re really going to be considered a church, if you’re going to be really exempt from these demands of the government, well, you have to propagate your Catholic faith and everything you do, you can serve only Catholics and employ only Catholics.”

The Archdiocese of Washington put an equally extreme message in the church bulletins just two days before Dolan's appearances:

1. Our more than 600 hospitals nationwide, which will need to stop non-Catholics at the emergency room door and say, ‘We are only allowed by the government to heal Catholics.’

2. Our schools, which will be required to say to non-Catholic parents, ‘We are only allowed by the government to educate Catholics.’

3. Our shelters, on cold nights, which will be required to say to the homeless who are non-Catholics, ‘We are only allowed by the government to shelter Catholics.’

4. Our food pantries, which will be forced to say to non-Catholics, ‘the government allows us only to satisfy the hunger of Catholics.’

 Do you see the pattern here?  Here's a picture to help you out.

The U.S. Catholic Church (or, at least, many of its members) is basically saying that they will stop upholding the teachings of Jesus Christ if they do not get their way.  Not only does this go directly against what Jesus taught, but it goes against everything Christianity stands for.

It astounds me that I - an atheist - know more about Jesus than high ranking members of the Catholic Church do, and that I have more moral integrity in my left nut than most of these cardinals do put together.  Yet people still listen to these idiots.  Well, I have an idea: start listening to me!

This brings me back to my first point that you probably thought was a bit out of place.  We give them money regardless of whether or not we are Catholics.  I, an atheist, give them money.  Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, they all give the Catholic Church money.

So I guess what I'm saying is...

Hey, Catholic Church.  Quit your bitching, or give the Federal Government all of that taxpayer money back.  Thanks.