Growing up Boston Irish Catholic in the 1950s, attending an elementary school run by nuns, being an altar boy, and having a reasonably religious family, at one point I wanted to be a priest, something that was not actually in the cards.

Being in the seminary and seeing how the sausage is made can turn you off to sausages, and when in later life, upon my accepting my sexual orientation after a long process, I found that regardless that I gave my youth to the church, because I was Gay, the church decided that I was a loss that should just be discarded.

My relationship with the church ended when the church chose to condemn me and worked very hard to get others to condemn me and mine more for politics than Christianity.

I, therefore, have many friends who are still involved in the Catholic Church from sitting in the pews on the required days to bishops, almost a pope.

Those who left like I did have their varying acceptance and rejection of the Church’s latest moves on social justice and equality issues. Some hold tightly to the tenets of the religion and with any pronouncements coming from the church Hierarchy, while others have arrived at the point that their involvement in the church has left them knowing some great people and memories, but with problems with some of the church’s latest politically motivated pronouncements.

Those who remained a part of the Church hope that all the extraneous involvement will someday recede, and the church will get back to its original teachings, pre-Renaissance and pre-Dark Ages, before politics took over the church and clerical positions like pastor, monsignor, auxiliary and full bishops, cardinals, the “princes of the church”, and a curia were instituted to run the political enterprise that was the church in a manner modelled after secular monarchic governments, a system if even originally good, became bastardized by the law of primogenitor that had the noblemen’s second sons entering the church to move up in the power structure of the mirror image of secular monarchies.

And when things got really uber-political, being a cardinal brought the same financial windfall that a noble inheritance would have supplied.

And, like many, the hearts of these priests, brothers, pastors, bishops, and higher ups in religious order hierarchies that I know sink any time groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops come out with a pronouncement that is obviously hypocritical and political.

I feel bad for my still involved with religion friends as they truly believe that which had them enter religious life to begin while seeing the same politics inside the sanctuary that they see in government and try to preserve real Christianity against the present non-christian actions of present day christians (small c) who would have Jesus a White man living in one of the Southern States where he wrote the Bible totally by himself in English, His time being taken up now with all the English versions of the Bible that he has to crank out.

It is not an official study, but when this latter group reacts on Facebook to some new church pronouncement, as loyal as they may be to their vocation, I can detect the pain in their words.

The latest stab at their hearts was the 168 to 55 vote in favor and 55 against after a three hour debate based on the belief that Biden’s of protecting and expanding abortion access is grounds for denying him Communion.

This is one more example of Christianity’s further politicization of Jesus in the flesh if you accept the Catholic Church’s belief in Transubstantiation that makes the bread and wine not just a re-enactment of the last supper with props but is actually turned into the body and blood of Christ at the Consecration part of the Canon of the Mass, the kernel of Catholicism.

A final vote on this total misstep will take place in November.

The bishops have established a specific admonition to Catholic politicians and any public figure who they deem disobeying church teaching on abortion and other core doctrinal issues.

My religiously grounded friends are just as confused as I am that a president who attends church regularly and bases his actions on his belief in what makes a person a true Christian having publicly stated,

 “My faith teaches me to care for the least among us. My faith implores me to embrace a preferential option for the poor and, as president, I will do everything in my power to fight poverty.”

He has also made it known that while he personally opposes abortion, he doesn’t think he should impose that position on Americans who feel otherwise. He is the president of all people and we the people hold to different religions or none, and do not have to be, nor should any of us be forced to follow the dictates of a You can buy kamagra from online drug stores safely free sildenafil samples and cheaply. By method for instance, in bosom disease patients, knead has levitra online sales been appeared to support the cells that battle tumor. You can purchase levitra 50mg from online drug stores conveniently. viagra comes under phosphodiesterase inhibitors, a class of drugs called PDE5-inhibitor. Kamagra Fizz is an oral medicine used order cialis in treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). religious belief system to which we may not prescribe, and should not be forced to follow religious precepts over the Constitution forcing us to obey one religion’s rules as the law of the land. .

When John Kennedy ran in 1960 the big “fear” was that he would allow the Vatican to control American politics. This was the United States, after all, and no church should run the country. Apparently, until now when a Catholic president, only the second in the history of the country, chooses to govern according to the Constitution, the Bishops are emboldened enough to bring the Kennedy Dilemma out of the shadows and try to control the country and its secular leadership in broad daylight, creating the very thing feared, but this time with the support of those who feared a Kennedy/Vatican pipeline.

Biden will not be mentioned by name and there will be no blanket declaration, leaving decisions about Communion for specific churchgoers up to individual bishops and archbishops. The bishops make a controversial call, and then throw it to their underlings to take the heat.

Back in 1984 the bishops took the same action against vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and then in 2004 against John Kerry.

Pope Francis has previously urged bishops not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon. In his 2013 Encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, he asserted,

“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse: it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all its problems.”

It “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.”

The Vatican’s Cardinal Luis Ladaria, a top doctrinal official, warned the bishops that going ahead with such a vote on this could “become a source of discord rather than unity.”

Just the news of this impending policy has been causing confusion among Catholics.

It will be interesting to see how loyal the bishops’ underlings are to the church beliefs as they choose to play American politics or obeying the Holy See.

The bishops are exerting pressure on a president who has stated,

“I accept my church’s position on abortion. That’s the Church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews.”

He recognizes a simple truth.

When Lyndon Banes Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, his fellow Southerners questioned why he, a Southerner himself, would betray Southern values and, perhaps, his own beliefs on race. He pointed out that he was president of all citizens of the United States, not just the ones who supported him or with whom he shares beliefs, but definitely no longer a person representing a specific area of the country or the people who lived there.

The same with Biden.

He is the “president of the United States”, not the “Catholic President of the United States”.

Meanwhile it has become only too obvious that while priests and other clerics were molesting children, these same bishops were then and remain silent now with many of these bishops guilty of just moving a molester quietly to another parish where he could begin molesting again with no one being prepared for that.

One of these very same people is in the position to deny giving Biden the Eucharist claiming he is violating church teachings which apparently is not the case with the molestation of minors.

Imagine a good, practicing Catholic subjected to the personal decisions and actions of someone who could very well be molesting the altar boy standing next to him as the priest denies Biden the Holy Eucharist.

Religion is killing itself, and this is a prime example of how.

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