No offense, Catholics. Honest.

Why am I glad I'm not Catholic?

I could never be associated with a religion that's sensitive enough to waste time boycotting movies. I really don't think "Angels and Demons" is going to affect your bottom line. If anything, you're just giving it free promotion. I didn't even know "Dogma" was out until the Church got involved.

I'd prefer my religion to tackle issues that were of some importance, like world hunger or anything that's not boycotting movies. Plus, my personal religion doesn't look nearly as evil as Catholicism does. I'm not saying that Catholicism itself is evil (although I'm certainly capable of doing it), but any church that has demons posted up on its houses of worship or uses models of its savior dying on a cross as it's symbol of worship doesn't really say to me, "God is Love." It says something more along the lines of "You don't want none of what I'm worshipping, bitch."

Not only that, this is the same church that kicked out a girl, her mother, and a doctor for aborting the girl's pregnancy. Now, that's not news because the Catholic Church generally frowns on this. What makes this exceptional is that the girl was two things, none of which were "loose." What she was was "12" and "raped." Oh, and the rapist got to keep being Catholic, because he only violated a girl and stole her innocence. It's not like he aborted a baby or used condoms or anything like that.

It just really seems like The Vatican's decisions aren't grounded in the real world at all, and what's scarier is that people still look to them for guidance. People didn't keep looking to Bush for guidance after it became clear that he was going to drive America off a cliff. That would be stupid, because if someone keeps giving you bad advice, generally you point out their historic battles with speaking English or swallowing pretzels.

But they don't do that for the Catholic Church. They just keep right on agreeing with the Pope, never questioning him when he says, "God doesn't want you to use condoms. He wants you to trust that you just won't get AIDS."

I know, he's supposed to preach abstinence and that's good. But in 2009 (or even 1984), it's just not realistic to expect that people are going to stay abstinent just because the Pope said so. If it were that easy, then "Just Say No" and tersely worded, non-binding resolutions would work. Besides, when the Pope was a kid, he was too busy harassing Jews to worry about pre-marital sex. Yet, his wealth of experience in the world of teenage sex is the basis for his argument.

Besides, when you take a leap of faith, you usually don't do that by doing something stupid. A leap of faith is something like, trusting that your business plan is going to work, not placing your genitals into a pot of boiling water and expecting God to turn it into ice.

Now, while Catholics don't seem to have developed the part of the brain that tells the difference between what's smart and what's ridiculous, they do understand how capitalism works.

If you frequent a business that historically picks the wrong side, despite what common sense is telling them to do (like not denouncing slavery or the Holocaust, for instance), generally, you don't go to those places anymore. Back in the 90s, the state of Georgia stopped flying the rebel flag on government buildings just because the NCAA said they weren't going to bring the tournament and it's hundreds of millions of dollars in windfall while those flags were up. It's just that simple, because money trumps all sorts of personal beliefs about Black people being three-fifths of one white man.

Well, why can't Catholics do that? Why can't Catholics go, "You know, God gave us brains so we could think, but why doesn't Holy Mother Church ever use them? Why do they keep making us look stupid? And what's with this ash on my forehead?" If more Catholics actually questioned their Church or left it for one that contained less halfwits, the Catholic Church would probably make some changes.

The Vatican understands that to keep it going, they have to have people coming and donating to the building fund (or is that just Black churches?). It's a business. And they know that their customers aren't going anywhere. They've been guilting Catholics into showing up for generations and because of that, it's okay for them to say "We'd rather keep the rapist around than the abortionist." Now, if they were saying that to a room full of empty pews, it might occur to them that people want their religious leaders to understand that the year is 2009, no 1409.

God wants you to think. That's why he gave the ability to do so. If he wanted you to blindly follow, he would have made you a dog. Or an angel. And I know you've grown attached to having genitals.