Thanks for this! How I wish more people would take this kind of history seriously. It matters deeply and must not be covered up.
The Catholic church has a history of committing great evil against people of color and LGBTQ people. their superstitious and irrational religious doctrines have caused great harm even up until today in Africa.
The Catholic Church worked hard and spent tremendous amounts of money in Africa to stop HIV/AIDS organizations from distributing and popularizing condoms as a form of safer sex. During a pandemic that was killing millions of people!
That they would do this reveals the church to be an instrument of tremendous evil and immorality. The leaders of the church who did this have blood on their hands and must be treated as the monsters they are.
While the church today disavows racism (even while continuing missionary drives to suppress native religions) they have never disavowed their homophobia.
Popes Nicholas and Alexander were overt racists who need to be looked on historically as the equivalent of Adolf Hitler. They were every bit as evil as Hitler. Literally.
People can tell themselves that the church has changed with respect to racism even as they continue to honor these men, but nobody can tell themselves that the church has changed with this respect to persecuting LGBTQ people.
Pope Francis is every bit as evil as Nicholas and Alexander. He leads a church that explicitly teaches that LGBTQ people are “intrinsically disordered.” He holds that LGBTQ people commit acts of “grave depravity" when we love our partners.
Pope Francis is a homophobic pig, yet people hold him up as some kind of ally. Every single one of his priests and bishops uphold those same obnoxious, evil doctrines. If they don’t they can’t continue to serve. Every Catholic priest and bishop is therefore an evil homophobic bigot.
Yet we give them a pass, just like history gives Nicholas and Alexander a pass.
We need to stop doing that. We need to call them out for being the vicious pieces of garbage that they are.
I’m sick and tired of religious leaders with monstrous theologies and doctrines being treated as if they are decent people.
Religion must never be an excuse for evil.
