As you might imagine, this got my attention.
Sinead was talking about her experiences and it became obvious to me, once again, that much as we may get on our high horse about other cultures and the oppression of their citizens, we in "the West" are far from spotless. In a nutshell, the Catholics used their power to proscribe "morality" as a tool that allowed them to hold poor women and use them, in essence, as forced labor (for which the Church received a profit) and then, to top that off, take the "sinner's" babies and "place them" with families -- no doubt rich families who felt at home dropping dollar bills in the collection plate -- deemed "fit".
Those who know me, know this did not "set well" with me and I intended to write my "comments" about how I felt but, at the time, I was really too pissed off to keep a balanced approach and took the high road and said nothing.
http://world.time.com/2013/02/07/the-magdalene-laundries-irish-report-exposes-a-national-shame/
I personally am appalled at the behavior of "the Church" and to say I have "issues" is a bit of an understatement. Saturday night I also started thinking, a lot, about something I had written about a couple of years ago regarding the Prophecy of St. Malachy and the end of the Catholic Church. For those who aren't aware of St. Malachy's prophecy, he outlined the list of Popes to come and we are getting pretty close to the end of that list.
Many have interpreted that as being apocalyptical -- since nothing could spell the end of the Catholic Church short of some giant, external cataclysm.
I, how surprising !!, hold an entirely different viewpoint. I have stated, more than once, that I expect the Catholic Church to end, not due to 2012 or aliens or Muslim terrorists or anything so dramatic but rather as a rot from within -- that basically the Church's corrupt ways finally tip the scales against them and people, (forgive the pun), en masse just up and say adios Father O'Shaughnessey.
I was thinking a lot about this Saturday and the sure to come changes within the Church and the Papacy and based on today's news -- the Pope is "retiring" -- it seems sort of "interesting" that this thought popped in my head less than 48 hours before the Pope announces he is leaving the Church.
Did I know Saturday this would happen on Monday? Of course not.
But, as my little sister Lynn Brucker announced on my FB wall earlier, I predicted a year or two back that the Pope would, in fact, "resign" and the escalation of the Church's final death throes would continue to speed up.
I have many close friends who are long-term devout Catholics and, out of my love and respect for them, I have tempered my comments (a bit) but -- the synchronicity of the Pope's "resignation" and my out of the blue thoughts on Saturday night about the speeding up of the end of the Papacy I find more than coincidental.
The Church, deservedly so, is dying. The Pope, I believe, is abandoning a sinking ship and the idea that a Pope would "retire" will, I imagine, send shock waves throughout the Church faithful and likely be another nail in the coffin of their once mighty empire.
Spiritual, but not religious.
The Christian Church, as we know it (and as I have predicted for the past few years) is about to end. Christianity isn't dying -- but the "form" of Christianity is.