I watch Ernie Chambers semi-regularly on Tuesday nights on our community television station. Sometimes I disagree with Ernie… a lot of times I agree with him. But no matter the case, Ernie is blunt, honest, and tells things how he sees them (and with a lot of documentation to back things up). That is something that has to be respected. He also usually sheds a new perspective on the topic and challenges me to think.
Last night he dedicated the whole hour and a half show to Catholic priests' child sex abuse scandals. I wasn't interested at first… it gets old after awhile… but Ernie had captured my attention. And he really captured my attention about half hour in when he made the blunt statement several times, "Catholicism equals stupidity". My initial reaction, in my head, was shock, which I think he was going for. Then, I thought, that's a blanket statement that probably isn't true in most cases. Not all Catholics are stupid.
But the more I thought about it… why would anyone choose to become, or stay, Catholic? Why would you choose to follow leaders who have proven time and time again that they're sexual predators. Not all Catholic priests, bishops, etc. are child molesters… but we have seen that many, many are. After you've seen it and read about it for so many years, how can you put your faith in these people? Something is wrong with Catholicism and I just don't understand how Catholics don't start questioning their leaders and their religion. Why would you want to be associated with people like that? Is religion so important to Catholics that they would put their own children at that risk for it? I guess so… it just doesn't seem logical to me. I don't get it.
So I'm going to agree with Ernie and say that Catholicism equals stupidity in the sense that people aren't recognizing that their leaders are corrupt and choosing to continue to associate themselves with those leaders.