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ROMAN CATHOLICISM, A WARNING!

Do not let man have you take his word for the word of God
- rethink being a Roman Catholic
- or is it just a label, a word imposed on you as a child?

Don't let religious opinions of others limit you! Roman Catholicism is only opinion.

The Roman Catholic Church uses the term anti-Catholic against anybody whose avowed purpose in examining the claims of the Church is pro-truth and pro-history. It is a Catholic attempt to disqualify that person. The Church is on a very uncertain moral ground. If the Church has the truth it cannot be harmed by investigation. The Church claims to be the Church of truth and the one true Church. If it is not then the faith of the Church ought to be undermined and doubt must be encouraged. It is only man-made so why not? Why make an idol out of a religion?

This website has a number of goals -

* Principally to urge people to put secular principles before religious ones - to keep religious influence out of health services and politics
(religious influence being understood as any suggestion that the reason, part or full, something should banned is because God says so)

* Secondarily to stop financial donations being made to the Roman Catholic Church

* Thirdly, to dissuade infant baptism and the exploitive ways children are converted to the faith not just for the sake of the children but because this crafty way of getting members gives the Church an unfair influence and power in the world

* Fourthly to show the world that the faith or Church is a man-made product

* Fifthly, to obey the Church command to serve the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth and promote it whether it is popular or not. Truth is not about us. Truth is truth.

The Roman Catholic faith is really self-deception - self-deception is the most dangerous evil of them all and the fertiliser for further lies, further errors and further evil. Faith is the reason suicide bombers are blowing up planes because it is based on the notion that God is speaking to you in your heart and he knows what is right in the circumstances even if it feels wrong to us. If you lie to yourself to make yourself imagine that you are a believer, you are also lying to everybody else. A faith of lies is responsible for all the damaging activities done in its name - even if its official teaching disapproves of these activities. Catholic condemnations of Inquisitions and clerical paedophilia ring hollow. Lies lead to more lies and very harmful ones.

The Church has refused to correct its teachings even when they have been conclusively refuted. It knowingly teaches doctrines as true that have been disproven or for which there is no evidence or for which the evidence is inadequate.

Roman Catholicism teaches harmful doctrine. It encourages people to put their own spiritual pleasures before those who are tormented by its doctrines so that they will uphold the doctrines regardless of the suffering that is caused to others.

Catholicism teaches that God whose existence cannot be proven has to be loved with all our hearts while our family and neighbours are not to be loved as much as God but merely as ourselves! Clearly, doctrine comes before people and the real motive in helping others has to be to keep God happy. It is obvious that if you love your wife so much that you would be happy for God to just disappear into non-existence just so that she could live that somebody telling you to stop that and love her less than God is not much of a person.

The Church says God made the universe out of nothing. Nothing contributed to the universe. Not even God's power. The Church says God is his power and denies he made the universe from himself. The universe is not God. So if the universe came from nothing that is not making. God did not make the universe after all. Thus the universe popped into existence whether he wanted it to or not. Nothing becoming something means it popped because there is no real becoming. Period. Creation is a core Catholic doctrine so if it is wrong the whole religion is in error. The creation doctrine is even behind the Church notion that bread and wine can be turned into the body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Creation is an evil doctrine for to worship a God who does what cannot be done is dangerous and deranged. He would not be intrinsically good for he can do any evil and still be good though it is impossible.

Catholicism teaches that the Church represents God on earth and has his authority to condemn sin and discipline sinners. In fact it is none of God's business (and therefore not the Church's either) what we do. Rights are based on need. Sin cannot harm an almighty and all-good God who is perfectly happy. He does not need to hate sin or oppose it - he has no need for our obedience. Our disobedience does him no harm. Therefore he has no right to command us. And it is evil then to say that he commands and that we should obey.

Is good good whether God commands it or not? If it is good merely because he says so then clearly the believer is admitting that he will regard murdering prostitutes as holy and good if God says so. If God has to consult a standard of right and wrong that is independent of him and autonomous then we have the right to disagree with his interpretation and doing good would matter not God or religion. The standard matters above all things not him and he is not really the only thing that matters though he says he is. God either makes good good or he doesn't. Those who say there is a third option are clearly lying. They say that God's goodness is his nature and that is the solution. So God did not cause himself to be good but he just is good which is why it really is wrong not to be good like him. But a God who is good without being responsible for it is even worse than one that makes good up out of thin air. And what standard says that God's goodness is really good though he had nothing to do with being naturally good?

They simply rephrase the notion that good is only what God wants it to be and is not really good. They rephrase it thus as, something is good only when God's character wants it to be. And God does not make his own goodness so how do we know by what standard it really is goodness. That is really rewording the two problems and pretending that a solution has been found. This deception is what they offer you as the third option. There is no third option.

Imagine you are forced to make a choice between doing good for person because it makes God happy and doing it only for the person. It has to be one or the other. A baby is sick and needs help. Do you give it the medicine because it will help? Or because God wants you to? Choose the first. Thus you see what matters. God is not God for God cannot matter. Christianity commits an extreme evil as regards principle in standing by Jesus' teaching that we must give all to God 100%.

We do not need God's forgiveness for our sins are none of his business. We just need to forgive ourselves and to ask forgiveness of others. Going to God for forgiveness in the Catholic confessional where sins are whispered to the priest is considered more important than going to those who you hurt. A horrible teaching like that is only appealing to people who need it to feel good about themselves. That can only happen if they have less sorrow for hurting people than displeasing God! The confessional is a violation of the privacy of the conscience. And even more so when the Church warns that telling lies to the priest in confession is a very serious sin and needs to be repented before death or the person will rot in Hell forever.

It urges people to imagine that their power to believe all the Church teaches is unnatural and is actually miraculous - that is God gives you light to show you that his gospel is true. This leads to a disturbing arrogance - often dressed in the robes of humility - and a detestation of anybody who says there are errors in the faith. It is a delusion and an illness to convince yourself that the faith you build yourself is not your work but merely looks as if it is.

It is more concerned about its religious teachings such as the sinless life of Jesus' mother being believed than in people doing good. Canon Law says you leave the Church if you contradict its clear teaching on religion but those who break or disbelieve most ethical precepts of the Church are still considered members.

It claims to be infallible. That is a dangerous example for other religions many of which are openly vicious.

It keeps many worrying doctrines away from the people.

It has one doctrine contradicting the other.

It pretends that absurd doctrines are true and without error!

It condemns its critics and the faith it seeks to put in us is intrinsically bigoted. Supernatural claims naturally require exceptionally good evidence and the Church urges people to obey its will without providing this evidence. It is cheating the people. If we start making very serious religious claims on flimsy evidence then why should we restrict ourselves to religious claims?

It claims to know what is best for people.

The religion says that some actions are objectively wrong. That means that even if you mean well by them they are still bad - you are still doing bad. The loving gay couple next door are still doing bad and are possibly worse than people who deliberately do bad.

Sin by definition is doing an act against God's will that should be punished and which deserves ill-feeling and condemnation. The Church says we must hate and detest sins but love the doer of the sins. This is a thinly disguised cover for hating the guts of those who disobey the Church or who stay in other religions instead of abjuring them and joining the Church. To hate sin is to have a personal ill-feeling for the sinner. You can't really hate sin if you see it as a thing. Hating it would be as much a sign of mental illness was would wanting to murder a chandelier that fell on top of you. It feels personal and no amount of self-deception will hide that from you. You can only camouflage it with hypocrisy. The teaching of the Church implies that we can be ungrateful to our benefactor but grateful to their good deeds. It is self-deception, delusion and hypocrisy. Believers pretend that God loves them and hates their sins - this is impossible so it follows their whole religion is a trick.

The Church gets away with its lie for a lot of people confuse wanting a person to stop doing things that harm them with hating sin. Sin means a crime against God and the Church accuses you of sin when it is enough to accuse you of wrongdoing and when in fact nobody has the right to be accused of sin when there is a chance that there is no God to sin against. You have to assume a person is innocent of a crime until proven guilty. And religion says that sin is a grave insult to the perfect love of God. That doctrine adds insult to injury.

It claims that its faith is not a form of belief but a form of knowledge. Its a way of knowing. Thus they end up saying they know Jesus was God himself and that priests turn bread into Jesus on the altar. Again, this is fundamentalism and the arrogance is a lethal example for other religions.

It accuses people of having the potential to be evil enough to choose to spend all eternity cursing God and love and everybody else there is in Hell. That is a very serious allegation and where is the proof? Without proof their assertion that people have gone to Hell and can go and that we need the Church and God to keep us out of this danger is mere slander.

A miracle is a supernatural event and distinguished from a paranormal one. Only a power outside nature can do the supernatural. A power within nature can do the paranormal. The Church says only God is truly outside nature. Satan may be able to do paranormal things but he will be within nature in the sense that God made him. The Church's miracles are hostile to science. Only God can create (assuming creation is possible which it is not) thus you cannot be sure a miracle is from God unless it involves creation. A miracle such as a communion wafer bleeding cannot be verified because you cannot show that the blood was created from nothing there and then. What if some paranormal force did some trick and the blood was not miraculously created? If you have to assume the blood was created then the miracle is is not about giving evidence for God. It is no good and it is insulting to God to say he does miracles to show off. The advantage of limiting miracles to acts of creation is that it weeds out a lot of fraudulent and ignorant claims. However, only God can know if an example of a creation miracle really happened. It is no good to us.

It is no trouble to the Church to approve of different apparitions of Jesus and Mary though they are clearly dubious. For example, they don't have tests done on the messages to show that it must have been the same entity giving the messages. It doesn't bother them that Jesus and Mary never look the same when they appear to someone new. Every vision of Mary seems to have its own personality and habits. Every apparition report is accompanied by a different description. The Church may use science to show that the visionaries are not mad but that is only a cover to make the Church look professional. The most important science - checking that it is really the same Jesus for example who has appeared to different people in different places - is left out. Plus the apostles made no effort to be verified sane or truthful after they reported the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They all expected people just to take their word for it. What if a visionary says Jesus told him the resurrection was a mistake or hoax? Why not just take his word for it?

It claims that babies are not the children of God but need to be turned into the children of God by baptism which takes away original sin, reduces their desire to sin when they get bigger and makes them members of the Church and obligated to obey the Church and believe what it believes. To say that one baby is better or even potentially better than another just because of a splash of water is to imply that racism isn't wrong. What's the difference? Racists could take encouragement and consolation from the Church. Society needs to react with revulsion towards infant baptism. And the Church needs to be forced to change its racist teaching. And it is racism. The whites were usually Christians and in the past treated blacks like rubbish because the blacks usually were not baptised.

Catholicism takes unfair advantage of children to indoctrinate them to program them to believe in Roman Catholicism and need it. Education should be about teaching a child verified material not religious fantasy. Children should be informed about religion in a neutral way and be left free to decide and to choose only what is relevant to them forming healthy relationships with others. If they want to choose any religious teachings they like let them but don't try to make sure it is just Catholic teachings they have. No belief or religion can be right for everybody. Schooling has to be about the child and her friends not God. A child needs to be motivated to be kind to other children. Stuff like prayers to Mary and Holy Communion only waste time that should be spent on helping a child to use psychological techniques to become a happy child who benefits all who he or she meets.

If people raised in religion were really free, conversions from one religion to another would be a lot more common.

It calls itself the only religion approved by God though religion is obviously dangerous and not something to be encouraged. Religion pretends that because we need light that its teachings are revealed by God who knows better than us what we should believe and do. Thus he could command us to exterminate modern day "Canaanites" just like he told Joshua in the Bible to destroy the Canaanites.

It has many gods though it pretends to believe in one. If God is perfect then he will always do the perfect thing under the circumstances. He cannot be influenced for he is perfect and yet the Church says the saints can influence him. So they must be more powerful and perfect than God. The doctrine that God tells them to influence him means they do not really influence him after all! The veneration of saints then involves lies.

It takes money off people without making any effort to prove that it deserves it. It doesn't do any research to show that its sacraments have supernatural power to make people unusually holy. Should the Church be proven to be a false religion it is not going to do the decent thing and give you a refund.

It tells people it has a sacrament just for those in danger of death called the anointing of the sick. This sacrament can take away your sentence to the everlasting solitary confinement of Hell but only a priest can give it. The sacrament has caused untold terror to millions who have found themselves dying alone and without a priest. Because the Church wants people to go to the priest and "learn" from him, it restricts the power to give the sacrament to him though it could be liberal. And this in an age where priests are scarce!

The Catholic Bible - which the Church says is true despite philosophy, science, archaeology and common sense saying different - says we are born with a sinful nature. That is to say we are sin - we sin because we are sinners and it is not a case where we are sinners because we sin. So we need to be turned into a holy person by regeneration. God changes our sinful nature. Protestants say this happens when we admit we need Jesus to keep the law of God for us in our place for we can't do any good work that deserves salvation or eternal life in Heaven. Catholics say this happens when the priest splashes a baby during baptism as he says magic words. But both agree that regeneration is needed. So obviously then members of these religions have a right to refuse to marry or to employ anybody who is not regenerated. Yet they don't assert this right - it is a dishonest and deceptive concession to secularism. But they did assert it in the past. Protestant shopkeepers in Northern Ireland often put, "No Roman Catholics need apply", in job adverts.

A stern religion that makes very serious claims and allegations needs to live a very seriously good lifestyle - eg giving all away for the poor and working in skid row if there are no planes or ships to the famine zones in Africa. Catholicism has no shame for the vast majority of Catholics do no more good works than atheists do. Such a Church has no right to be called holy.

Secularism is being religiously neutral. Christianity and Islam and other religions that think they were set up by God through men but are not man-made say there is no middle ground - you are for God and his ways or you are not. They expressly deny that neutrality is an option. And quite right too. If God reveals truths through and in a religion, then your response can only be for or against. Doing anything that is condemned as sin or as even a little disloyal is a counter-witness. If the religion has the truth then trying to find the middle ground between truth and error is ridiculous for there is no middle. There is only a lie at the middle. A believer who is secularist is being extremely inconsistent and a liar. This creates problems for the integrity of secularism and you wonder if they would be as secular if they had the power to enforce religious decrees on the people through the state.

The secularist might put restrictions on the availability of contraception but only because the evidence seems to indicate that this is the right course. She will not do it because her religion, if she has one, or her God frowns on contraception. Secularism puts people first and does not give a damn about what a God says or wants. It keeps its eye on the natural and puts the supernatural out of its mind. It is not against religion in doing this - it simply pays no attention to religion. Secularism does not fear religious faith or superstition. It only fears turning religious or superstitious principles into legislation or policy. Secularism then is not intolerance but the only true form of tolerance. Secularism is virtue - religion is not. Religion is a danger to tolerance no matter how liberal it claims to be. Whether extremist or liberal, religion is still based on a lack of respect for tolerance. The outlook is the same - it is just the packaging and the results of its thinking that differences may appear in. The liberal cannot condemn the fundamentalist. Both do not consider intolerance wrong in itself. No miracle however convincing can really be from a loving God when it promotes religion. So do not be swayed by signs and wonders. Assume they are hoaxes or somehow natural after all or that they are from some otherworldly power that deserves no allegiance.

The government that governs least governs best. The government does not need religious and spiritual demands complicating things.

Religionists in the secular world say they keep their religion out of their politics or career etc. For example, the Roman Catholic nurse may pray ten times a day and go to Mass but when she goes to the hospital to assist in an abortion she says she keeps her religion out of it and ignores it when it says her assistance is immoral. In fact, she is against her religion. She is not an advertisement for it. If you can stop being Catholic for your job then why not stop being Catholic for anything? Why not stop being Catholic, why not stop going to Mass, for it means you can sleep longer on a Sunday morning? If she tries to be a Catholic example for her children she will have no credibility so she might as well leave it up to the children to decide if they want to be Catholic when they get old enough. The point is: the secularist who claims active religious membership is against religion necessarily. The secularist who separates from religion is not necessarily.

Many religions are suppressed up to a point by secularism and they give in to it. For example, even the Church would fire a counsellor who told a client: "Loving God with my entire being is what matters. Jesus said it was the main commandment. I am only helping you for him and not for you." Yet obviously a genuine Christian would have to say just that. Religion is virtually identical with self-deception and hypocrisy.

Whoever says secularism should not interfere with Christian doctrine fails to admit that it happens already and indeed if Christians were consistent secularism in Christian countries would collapse. One can only admire the Muslims for at least making an effort to be consistent with their faith and to eschew hypocrisy which means they have no allegiance to secularist principles.

Religion is about revelation that is at least partly beyond human understanding. It says that our understanding of right and wrong and of religious truth is faulty so we need God to lay down laws about how we should behave and we need God to reveal truths to us. So if God commands us to exterminate black people then it is our duty to obey. If religion says God would never command such a thing then it is contradicting its doctrine that God knows best and sees the full picture. It is deciding what God can and can't command so it is behaving as if it is independent of God. So we have to wonder does it really believe in his authority or not? There is implicit nastiness and danger in religion. Religion is replete with self-deceit and pretence. Religion is based on supernatural morals and doctrines. Thus though secularism may ignore religion without opposing it, religion certainly opposes and works against secularism.

Religion might say child abuse is wrong just as secularism does. But this is only superficial agreement for the motivation is different. Religion says it is wrong because God decrees that it is unlawful while secularism says that hurting a baby is wrong even if God says it is justifiable in the overall scheme of things. Religion only looks as if it cares about the baby. It does not. Only secularism is really on the baby's side.

If religionists give free rein to drop and accept as much of the religion as a member wants then what is the point of having a religion? What you have then is not a religion - religion means to bind and to obligate people to supernatural doctrines and moral teachings allegedly revealed by a divine source - but a pick and mix sweet shelf. Your prayers to God would be false for you really think the only God in your life is yourself. Even if there is a God, what you are praying to is a fantasy playmate. You must be cleverer than God when you expect favours from him as if he can't tell you are only using him. If you can pick and choose from your religion then you have no right to insist that others do it the way you do it. For example, if a priest decides to organise nude masses in the name of a pagan God in the name of honouring the body and religious inclusion then you cannot object. And if you are wiser than your religion then what are you doing in it?

The Church has to pretend to be innocuous in the current climate which is hostile to its ethos - this is only a strategy. Deep down it is as intolerant and arrogant as it ever was in the past. None of the unsavoury doctrines of the past have been officially and definitively renounced. The best way to help people see the light is to ask them questions and encourage them to investigate. They will uncover subconscious doubts and the truth will set them free.

Do not be silent. Silence allows Roman Catholicism to harm and trick innocent people. To cover for it is going to help no one in the long run. As with everything that others do, if it is wrong you cannot be neutral or encourage it for it is your right to do good as you see fit. In this sense, their religion is your business.

Quit Catholicism!