The Catholic Church no longer relies on inquisitorial torture chambers and auto-dafés, rather engages in psychological extortion by exacting unconditional obedience from its crestfallen congregants
God’s “Work” Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta
Growing disenchantment will have woeful historical consequences for the Vatican’s archaic and unyielding mandates.
Virulent opposition to reproductive rights; vicious attacks on feminism; an eagerness to coddle Jewish and Islamic hard-liners when their fanatical anti-choice, anti-progressive, homophobic agendas converge; and refusal to accept moral responsibility for the political crimes committed by the right-wing regimes it favors all demonstrate how desperate and estranged the Church has strayed from reality.
Worse, attempts to demonize grassroots religion by equating it with communism has had a dispiriting effect on the faithful, especially those in Latin America who, benumbed by years of armed conflict, dislocation, oppression, and privation, have tried desperately to wrest their nation’s politics from the merciless clutches of a privileged few.