Whore of B

I remember as a young man listening occasionally to fundamentalist Protestant ministers on television who referred to the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. I thought at the time that it was a hysterical and scabrous characterization; the result of years of indoctrination in fringe theology, driven by a crass profit motive. But now, after decades of reflection and realization, I believe I understand what those canting poseurs meant.

It has taken me nearly fifty years of thought and soul-searching and life experience to come to the following conclusion: The Roman Catholic Church is an evil institution. Let me say it again: By its very nature, reinforced by its traditions and institutional behavior, the Catholic Church is a force for evil in the world.

I no longer see how any right-minded or well-intentioned person can subscribe to its teachings, nor how any earnest searcher after truth or the divine in man can succumb to its authority. The Church is a vile corruption of the teachings of Jesus, on whom it claims to be founded. That vague and illiterate man (if we can judge by how little we know of his origins and the fact that he committed nothing to writing), seems to have preached the virtues of poverty, self-neglect, absolute love and universal peace and tolerance, all concepts inimical to the Catholic Church as we know it. That the Church should claim its authorship from such a character is nothing more than farce at best, and blasphemy at worst. The Catholic Church has no more to do with the nature and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than does the current federal government with the principles of the Founding Fathers.

The Church has, over the centuries, been the purveyor of violence, intolerance, ignorance and injustice. And throughout most of its institutional history, it has been a haven to criminals of the worst sort, including thieves, liars, corrupt politicians, murderers and pedophiles. On this last point I have much to say, and have tried to say it in these pages. But suffice it to say that the abetting and cover-up of the crimes of child molesters has gone on throughout the entire history of the Church, and continues to this very evening, when the Los Angeles Archdiocese has compelled the records of hierarchical protectors of pedophiles to remain sealed from public scrutiny.

Beyond that, for generations, the Church, through its system of Catholic education, has been guilty of myriad crimes against children. By this I mean the systematic indoctrination of innocent little boys and girls in a body of dogma that makes no sense, and, more seriously, that rationalizes superstition and religious intolerance, enforced by the most vile threats of corporal punishment and eternal damnation. I was, myself, the victim of such browbeating from the ages of seven to eighteen. I and my fellow child-students were routinely beaten, terrorized, and solemnly threatened with an eternity of fire and torment if we did not submit ourselves absolutely to the authority of Holy Mother Church. That any mother would terrorize and abuse her children so is beyond my comprehension.

We were told, on a daily basis from the age of seven (the age of reason, as the Church terms it), that if we did not comply with every jot and iota of its teachings, we were destined to rot in hell fire for all eternity. What sane adult, with even the scarcest solicitude for children, would impose such terror on innocents? Who,  claiming any form of humanity, would abuse the children in their care in such a fashion? We were ritually herded into church three of four times a week, forced to confess (and often to invent) sins which we whispered in the dark to anonymous priests, begging for forgiveness, subjected to regular humiliation and corporal punishment, including, screaming, slapping, whippings and beatings. And all of this was elevated to the level of divine intent by a sexually confused and criminal clergy, represented to us as God's vicars on Earth.

I have stated here before, and I repeat again: The Catholic Church is a conspiracy against the innocence of children. The number of confessed pedophiles, and those who have enabled and protected them, is but a shadow of the actual number of violators of children. I have no hesitation in going so far as to state that every member of the Catholic clergy is complicit in those crimes, for those who did not commit them knew about them, and those who did not know about them did not want to know. All are guilty, either directly or indirectly, and the ones who are guilty by silence are not less so than those whose consecrated fingers raped and molested children.

There is a long and unbroken history in the Church of crimes against children, and against humanity at large. Founded on the poor shepherd of Palestine as it claims to be, the Church's own wealth, crimes  and arrogance condemn it far beyond my power to do so. But the worst of its sins remain those against the most harmless and innocent in its care: the children of the Church, who could neither understand nor resist the brutality and inhumanity perpetrated against them. Coldly, cunningly and calculatedly by men and women who wore the black mantel of righteousness, which was nothing more nor less than the black shirts of the fascists with whom they conspired so cravenly in the century past.

Bad to verse...

Midnight

When the last bell-struck
Hour of the night
Has flicked its tongue
Into the ear of sleep
We waken if we dare
To see the dark,
Reach out to fold
Its slender flanks
And kiss its cheek
And hide our face
Within its velvet seams
And give it thanks
That it has put an end
At last to dreams



Dawn

What is that pallor
On the brow of night?
Is darkness dying,
Infected by the light?
There must be a remedy
To cure this bright decay,
Quench this inflammation
And put an end to day



What is it that fringes
On the shore of this
Unsleeping night?
Flotsam
Jetsam
Remnants of intent.
Here a bottle there a page
Wood and cloth and
Tailings indistinct
Stained with oil
Choked with weed
Too obstinate to sink.
The sea beyond
Is vast and heaving
But I cannot resist the spell
Of this its leaving,
For every sodden portion
Tells a tale an epitaph
Of passengers and crew
Of motor and of sail
Of trash and treasure
Tumbled into blue
Horizoned deep
To find its resting here
In jumbled aimless sleep.
This bright glass is laughter
That broken frame despair
A book begun
But never read
A brush that busked
A new bride’s hair;
That which held such promise
Now lies fallow --
All that's sown in depth
Will die in shallow.
As we journey hence
From calm to storm
From breeze to rising wind
Our vessels leave behind
A spall from where we had begun:
A puzzle for another time and mind,
Another sleepless night awaiting sun.

Benghazi

I have hesitated to write about the events in Libya until, as the President has continually suggested, all the facts are in. We have enough, now, and the picture they form is disgraceful. An American ambassador and three other Americans were murdered, and the Administration did nothing to help them. The real question, beyond the details, is why?

We now know that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi had been attacked twice before the fatal raid, and that the ambassador and staff had repeatedly asked for increased security. We know that the Administration and the State Department had denied those requests because they did not wish to offend the sensibilities of the government (such as it is) in Libya. We know that other foreign authorities, such as the British Embassy and the Red Cross had pulled out of Benghazi because of the severe security threat, and that the American legation was the only one left, and that it was left virtually unprotected.

We know that the President's and the U.N. Ambassador's repeated claims that the fatal attack was the result of a demonstration gone bad were false. There was no demonstration, and the idea that protesters would bring automatic weapons, a mortar and rocket propelled grenades to a demonstration was, in any case, absurd. We now know that the existence of the video that Obama repeatedly claimed provoked the attack was not even known in Libya (the Libyan leader himself said so), and that the President knew that was the case, and still went on national television and before the U.N. claiming that the video was the cause.

We know that the attack, rather than the spontaneous outbreak of violence the President claimed it to be, was a concerted seven-hour-long assault, and that Administration officials watched it in real time on video sent by two drones overhead. We know that the ambassador requested increased security on the very day of the attack, and that three urgent requests for assistance during the attack were denied.

We know that two Navy Seals defied orders not to assist the staff at the consulate and in the nearby safe house and went to their defense, losing their lives as a result. We also know that they managed to save some American lives before they were killed. We know that these two men were heroes - honest-to-god heroes just like in the movies - and that their requests for assistance were denied. We know that the U.S. possessed security assets in nearby areas which could have been sent to rescue them, but they were withheld.

And we know that the U.N. Ambassador, the Secretary of State and the President lied about all of this.

We also know that, after the tragedy, the President referred to the murder of the Ambassador as being "not optimal," and that at the memorial service for one of the Seals, the Vice-President commented to the hero's father in a stage whisper about the size of his son's balls, and that when the President shook the father's hand, he could not look him in the eyes. It was, the father has said, "like shaking hands with a dead fish."

It becomes tedious to point out that if anything remotely like this had occurred under a Republican administration, the mainstream press would be howling it from every front page, website and cable channel. There would be strident demands for investigations, resignations and impeachment. We recall that when the Bush Administration was accused of leaking the name of a CIA officer (a case in which no one was injured or killed), the media demanded that people be sent to jail, and, indeed, one administration official was tried and imprisoned. Yet in this instance, in which American territory was attacked and American officials were murdered, the mainstream media has chosen largely to ignore what now appears as a disgusting and pathetic lack of leadership and panoply of lies.

All this brings us back to my initial question: Why? Why did the Obama Administration, that is to say, the President, choose to ignore the appeals for security from Libya, and even on the day of the attack and during the murderous assault, still refused to save the lives of an American ambassador and American citizens? And why, having failed to do so, did he and his officials lie so ardently and repeatedly about it?

The answer, of course, is that we are in the middle of an election campaign, and nothing is more important than getting Barack Obama re-elected. Nothing. Not the nation's security, not the truth, not the lives of our citizens. Nothing.

I remember when Chuck Colson, one of Richard Nixon's re-election campaign thugs, said that he would run over his own grandmother to get Nixon re-elected. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, and eighteen months later forced to resign, and Colson and many other people (not including Nixon) went to prison.

Barack Obama has done worse than that: He, it now appears, allowed an American ambassador and three other Americans to die while his people literally watched on video. Then, by all accounts, he went to bed, and the next day, to a fundraising event in Las Vegas.

With regard to the coming election, nothing more needs to be said. Nothing.

Random thoughts

--I was thinking today about kindness. Tolstoy said that kindness can be added to anything, and that is correct. Kindness can enhance any gesture; it can even be added to criticism and punishment. Jesus told us to treat others as we would wish them to treat us; he did not say to treat others well in order that they will reciprocate. We are kind not because of expectation of reciprocity, but, rather, because kindness nourishes the soul and affirms and deepens our humanity. This is illustrated most clearly by kindness to animals, which seems simply natural, even instinctual, to human beings. We do not treat animals with kindness in expectation that they will respond in kind; in most cases, in fact, they will not. Not abusing bears or poisonous snakes does not make them them kinder to us. They will continue to pursue their natures whether we treat them kindly or no. We do so, nonetheless, because it is an expression and extension of our humanity. Kindness is, therefore, rooted in humanity, not in calculation or in the nature of the recipient or our relation to him, or in expectation of reward; it is rooted in our souls.

--If god is love, why does life hurt so much?

--The lesson of birth is that we will never make a move of any importance in this life without hurting someone we love.

--Death remains a problem no matter what we do with it. Tolstoy wrote that if life is good, then death, which is a necessary part of life, must also be good. This is not the case. Rather, one could argue that if life is good, then death, which puts an end to life, must be evil, since it cancels out good. What Tolstoy was failing to realize is that, faced with the problem of death, he was seeking a way to think about it which would make it appear good. This is like a man, faced with a defect in his beloved's face, squints or seeks a light in which the defect will not appear, or will appear beautiful. To conceive of death as good is self-delusion. What, then, do we do with it?

Death is inevitable; that is, it is tied to time. Hamlet said 'If it be not now, then 'twill come; if it is not to come, then 'twill be now; and if it be not now, then surely it will come. The readiness is all.' But what readiness? What does readiness for death mean? What does it consist of? Does it mean resignation, putting one's affairs in order, making peace with one's fate? If readiness is merely acceptance, and actions and attitudes based on acceptance, then we remain victims of death; its servants and not its masters. That is why I wrote in my Crusade novel that death teaches us we are nothing - nothing but the slaves of time.

If the alternative to this view is, as Tolstoy often argued, to focus on and live in the present, and to do as much kindness as we can, then the question arises: Why? Ultimately, doing so will make no difference in our lives. Yet it will in the lives of others. And so we are left with the forlorn hope that our behavior in this life will make better the lives of others, and the even more forlorn realization that it will make no difference to our own fate. What this suggests is that we live for others; yet, what is the point of that?

All of this is true only if there is no form of accounting after death. For those who accept this idea, there is no point to life. At best it is altruism, and, at worst, idle entertainment and time marking; rather like those long hours we spend in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists to whom we take our children for care. We may chat cordially or read or play games to pass the time, in the knowledge that we are doing what is best for another whom we love - and that has intrinsic value. This, it seems to me, is as close to an understanding of the meaning of life as I can come. But it is scant consolation in the face of extinction. And so I return to the idea that, unless one conceives of some form of accouting after death, the experience of life is shallow at best.

Now, as I have written before, I reject utterly the juvenile Christian concept of an afterlife of eternal punishment or reward, which is nothing more than a fairy tale intended to scare unreflecting minds into submission to dogma. It is, of course, posited on the idea that we will be in the body after death, which is nonsense when one thinks of it. Corporeal beings such as we cannot exist outside of time - there is no eternity for those who live within the confines of the body. And so, what is one to make of the necessity of an accounting after death? What vision of it makes sense in terms of what we know and what we can believe?

As I have also written before, I tend toward the Buddhist conception of a cycle of lives through which the soul passes in its quest to liberate itself from time and suffering. And yet, I continue to bump up against what appears to me a contradiction; namely, the idea of the individuation of the soul. To believe that a soul persists through many incarnations, intact as it were, is, I think, to confuses the soul with the personality. It is the personality which is individuated, and that individual personality, it seems to me, dissolves at death.

And so what of the postmortem accounting, which, I think, alone makes sense of suffering and kindness and the whole personal history of each human life? An afterlife alone renders personality meaningful, in that it extends the consequences of personal choice out beyond the temporal. But of such an afterlife I can find no conception that makes sense to me.

--Formerly I had thought of death as a threshold; as a sort of temporal-spatial doorway through which we pass into another dimension of existence. But this rather conventional view has given way in my mind to a less structural and more fluid one. I now tend to think of the experience of dying as passing through a membrane; a fluid transition from one degree of pressure, as it were, to another. We know that fluids always migrate from areas of higher pressure to those of lower. May it not be so with the soul, which is confined - pressurized, if I may so put it - within the body, and then, through a process of osmosis, returns to its natural state outside the body? And, if this is so, what are the implications for the soul and the afterlife?

--I continue to reflect on the idea that consciousness is the nature of the spiritual force which animates all things. Formerly I had though that consciousness was the product of the soul's intersection with the corporeal. But, more and more, it seems to me that consciousness precedes the corporeal, and is merely limited by it. Therefore, after death, the soul regains or returns to its true form, which transcends the human experience of it in the body. 'We see now as through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.' And the face we will see is our own true face.

Poetry encore

Continuing with my plan to publish my poetry, whether the industry likes it or not...

Love is nourishment of life
milk on which it mouths
when drought of death
dries even tears. These years
we parcel out like playdough
colored pastel figures sculpted
by our fingers into shapes that linger
only till they parch and crumble
are too humble to contain the truth
that we possess nor age nor youth
but nod a dozy moment till
the breath of death revives us
and we wake and find it seems
we are the love we thirsted for in dreams.


What is Love?

Love is the lie we have to tell
Ourselves and others
It is escape from hell
An orphan’s prayer
That someone bothers
For the pain we feel in dreams
And every sunless morning
When we wake to face the raw
Reliving pain of borning
And melancholy hope of dying
Remembering with every breath
The truth that we are born for death:
That is why we are lying

Ideas...

I am casting about for the subject for my next book, which will be my tenth. I have a few ideas, but it occurred to me that some of you may have better ones. People are forever coming up to me and saying: I have a great idea for a book!

Therefore, I am soliciting ideas from you: fiction or non-fiction; stories, anecdotes, memoirs, dreams, fantasies, fears, suspicions, joys, heartaches, insights.

I realize this is a bit risky, but to this point readers of this blog have been pretty serious-minded and articulate. So if you have any suggestions, please send them to me - briefly - and I will consider them.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Poetic Fits

Back after a long absence. For me, the silence has been thick with depression and struggle; for many of you, I suspect it has been something of a relief.

Two years ago I brought out a volume of poetry. It was self-published since no corporation is foolish enough to publish poetry anymore. Most of the poems - some 450 pages of them - are love poetry, conceived in fits of passion which I can scarcely remember now, and which no longer seem to me of any importance.

Since I suppose that my volume of poems will never see the light of day, I have decided to publish one here from time to time, in case anyone is interested. I will begin with this one, which, because it is not about love, is uncharacteristically upbeat...


endstart

what came before endures behind
was and is are merely states of mind
nothing that is gone is lost
everything renews, and in December’s frost
are memories of dews to which we woke
in May from dreams that presaged
the dawning of the day that only death can bring;
stars explode the night in fireworks
to light our way through time, and time
returns upon itself in every birth of mind;
that which was hid is evermore revealed
and what was sealed in lips or tombs
will speak again within the wombs of earth
there is no dearth of hope so long as soul
can clap its hands and sing, there is no end
of anything so long as there is spring