Torture Comes And Torture Goes

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers". Carl Jung

The currant pedophile scandal cannot help to bring to mind the Catholic Church. They are using the same playbook that the Catholic Church perfected. You find out about the pedophile and then, for reasons of money and power, you hide and protect them. As a matter of fact this administration has become the Catholic Church. The only thing missing are the Prada gowns.
Yes, Virginia, the pope wears Prada. I am not making this up. The man who took a vow of poverty is using donations to stroll around in incredibly expensive gowns. And they are gowns no matter what you choose to call them. But I digress, where was I? Oh yes, the politics of fear.
You control people by fear. In the Republican’s case they are using terrorists to attempt to scare us blind. The Catholic Church uses the brilliantly evil concept of hell to scare us into our allegiance and our money. They both work, and they are both means of torture.
Elizabeth Taylor, who knows a thing or too about both physical and mental pain was once asked which was worse. Without hesitation, she replied, “I have been at deaths door many times. I have felt excruciating pain. But no physical pain I’ve endured has come close to how horrible mental torture is”. Notice she used the word “torture”, not pain. This was not a mistake. Miss Taylor might appear a bit “out there” now, but most of her life she was as sharp as a whip, and as witty as hell.
Now I want you to try and picture a six-year-old mind. It is a sponge, thirsty and, unless it experienced some sort of abuse, very, very trusting. Now picture the little boy or girl who has that mind going to their first day of school. The world as they know it is changing. They are both excited and petrified. And without their parents, siblings and friends they are, most of all, vulnerable.
To make this more vivid, I am now going to make this personal. Everything I am about to tell you is true. I will not exaggerate anything, I don’t have to. As John Waters once said, “I’m glad I was raised Catholic. They gave me my sense of drama”.
I grew up in a neighborhood with three major ethnic groups, Italian, Irish, and Polish. Each group had its own church and school. If you were Irish and lived close to the Polish school, you couldn’t get in. This bizarre and blatant segregation didn’t hit me until years later, of course, but forty years later nothing has changed. It is still the policy, at least in my neighborhood anyway.
So on a beautiful September day in 1963, I found myself facing my first day of school. The first thing that hit me was the nun, Sister Mary Jane Francis.
Why was she dressed like that? Why is she talking so loud? Why is she always holding that ruler?
They moved very fast. The first day I was taught the difference between mortal and venial sins. By day three up came the concept of hell, and who would go there.
I have a good imagination. As she was describing it I was picturing it. The way she said “will burn forever, in unimaginable agony, for all eternity” still wakes me up at night.
I timidly raised my hand. I told her my parents don’t go to church and asked her if they were going to hell. This was her exact reply, “The Bible clearly tells us that if you die with a mortal sin on your soul you will go to hell”. That was enough for me. I started crying hysterically. She tried to “comfort” me by slapping my head with that ruler and demanded that I stop crying. When that didn’t work, I was taken to the “Rectory," the place were the priest lived.
I was, at first, left alone in the office. The office had an enormous and amazingly detailed sculpture of Christ on the cross. It was so horrible an image I couldn’t even look at it. So I sat with my head down waiting for what was to come next.
As if by magic, a priest was suddenly behind me.
”Look up, my child, and see what Jesus went though to save your soul," he said. I shook my head no. This exchange repeated itself untill he lost patience and actually grabbed my face and forced me to look.
Then with the power of a thunderbolt came the words, “Get your motherfucking hands off my child”. We both turned to see my Mother, still with curlers in her hair, in a house coat and bedroom slippers. We lived a half a block away, so the instant she got the phone call that her child “was disrupting the classroom” she flew out of the house. To me she looked silly, so I began to giggle.
The priest, however, was scared shitless.
He mumbled something like "I was only trying to.”
“I don’t care what you were trying to do. If I ever see with your hands on my son again, I will kill you with my bare hands. I’m taking him home now, but I’ll be back for you,” Mother said.
And back she went. I don’t know what was said then, but whenever I raised my hand during religion class since that meeting, I was completely ignored.
That night my Mother and Father went into the bedroom to discuss what happened. They were speaking very quietly, so I only got bits and pieces.
”But he’ll be beaten in public school"..."I told you before, I don’t want him exposed to this nonsense”..."at least here he has his brother to protect him”.
I guess I should tell you at this point that I’m gay and was pretty feminine in appearance and manner at that time. My brother, however, was a tough little kid, two years older then me. Soon our room would be filled with his boxing trophies. So I was never teased. As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize I was different until I went to school. So I was able to do and say what I pleased. A quality I have to this day. A quality that sometimes gets me in trouble, but mostly gains me peoples' respect.
When the talking stopped, I ran away into my room. My Father came in and this is what he said to me.
“The people where you go to school believe in some pretty crazy things, don’t they?” I shook my head yes. “Crazy people are everywhere so you have to get used to it. Do you think you can do that?’ I shook my head yes. “Are you absolutely positively sure?’ Again I shook my head yes. ”If you have any trouble, do you promise to tell me?” I said, “Yes, Dad, I promise.” He then rubbed my head and told he would be right back.
When he came back his demeanor was different, I could tell he wasn’t happy about something but I didn’t know what. The he took a deep breath, put me on his lap and said,” Listen Michael, for reasons you won’t understand now we are going to keep you in this school. We will take it day by day. I want you listen to every word they say, I want you to learn all you can, I want you to be the best student you can be. But after religion class, I want you to come home and tell me what they told you. It will all sound pretty crazy, but I’ll try my best to explain why they believe this nonsense to you."
Then he pulled the big move.
Whenever my Father had something important to tell he would always kneel down so we can be eye to eye and and he would hold my arms. Since I was, at this point, sitting in his lap, he got up and put me down, and I sat on the floor.
He lifted me up and then knelt down and held my arms. “I want you listen to me very, very closely. Do you know much I love you?"
“Yes, Dad this much.” I then stretched my arms out as far as I could. He smiled and held my arms again. "That’s right, that much and much, much more. More than I can ever explain. Now do you think I could ever, no matter what you did, throw you in a fire, even for a second?" I said, “No way”. His smile got bigger, “Now, as much as I love you, God loves you even more. And he loves all his children just as much, each and everyone one of us. Now can you possibly imagine God throwing you into a fire, even for a second, when I couldn’t even to that?"
I said, “No, throwing your kid in a fire would be crazy.” Then with complete sincerity, he stared me right in the eyes he said, “You are the smartest boy in the world. I am very proud of you. I’m so lucky to have a son like you.”
We both just smiled at each other for a moment. Then he stood up, and without missing a beat he said, “Now that that’s settled go downstairs and annoy your Mother, she deserves it.”
I shot out of the room. He ran after me. “Michael, stop right there,” he said. I froze, “I was only kidding. Never, ever annoy your Mother.” I said, “Darn it”. He found that to be very funny. He was a very loud laugher. After the echo of his laughter went through the house he winked and said, “Well, not on purpose anyway”.
I wish I can tell you that my Father’s brilliant handling of that situation worked. But it did not. Once something as powerful as the image of a hell gets into a child’s mind, it is almost impossible to fully get it out. When I began to realize that I was gay, that’s the first place my mind went. I am going to go to hell. Despite the illogic of it, that’s the first thing I thought. It was torture, pure mental torture. But it forced me to ask myself questions I normally would not have. People never question their religion unless something profound happens to them.
How could love be evil? It went from that question to years of study. I now know who wrote each chapter of the Bible and why. I know when passages were changed and why. Most of the Old Testament was written by Moses, a senile alcoholic, who in a desperate attempt to keep the Jews from being slaughtered, created a vengeful, “eye for an eye” god, a god to be feared, not loved. He successfully terrorized his people into loving his god. His writings were so confusing that over one hundred religions grew out of it.
It’s astounding it worked.
The very first chapter gives the first clue. Original sin is the sin of eating from “the tree of knowledge”. In other words, thinking is forbidden, only blind faith will get you into his heaven. And blind faith is the most dangerous thing there is. Not to question is insanity. It is also the easy way out, hence the success of religions. I honestly believe that the writing of Moses has done more damage to the human race then any other concept, individual, government, or organization before or since.
Jesus realized the danger of his writings. He was a man of remarkable wisdom and love. Whatever references he made to being the son of god were always followed with the words “we all are”. These references were quickly removed once that the powers that be decided this particular profit would be the true Messiah. Jesus came to tell the world that God was all-loving and all-forgiving. That it wasn’t “an eye for an eye,” it was “turn the other cheek”.
And Jesus never even uttered the word “homosexuality”, let alone passed judgment on it. Jesus came to tell his people that Moses was wrong and his writings dangerous.
And they slaughtered him for it. The greatest irony in history is that the Old and New Testament were bound together. The two books completely contradict themselves, with the exception of “Revelations”. No one is quit sure who wrote this cheerful little ditty.
But they do know that “This book was sent to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia (present- day Turkey ) to warn them against falling away from their faith in Christ”*
After all this research, the realization that the belief in hell is insanity really didn’t hit me till I fell in love. I mean real love with another man. I was holding him while he was sleeping. Police sirens were wailing in the night. Something awful was happening somewhere outside. But here in this tiny bedroom, there was nothing but peace, comfort and love. I looked at the look of contentment in my sleeping lovers' face and felt the warmth of his love in ever fiber of my being.
And I thought to myself, “What could possibly be wrong with this?”
And for the first time in my life, with complete and total belief, I was able to tell myself, “Nothing, absolutely nothing”.
This moment of clarity did not come to me by way of knowledge, but by way of love.
It took the invincible power of love to finally erase the hell out of by head. And along with the hell went the terror.
When I started writing this my intent was to show the correlation between the Catholic Church and this current Republican administration’s use of terror to control the populace. But I now see it has turned into a cautionary tale.
Do not take anything at face value. Question everyone and everything. Do not let terror scare you into blindness.
And for God’s sake, if you truly love your child , let the child grow up enough before you expose them to anything as profound and life-guiding as a religion.
There are better ways to teach morality.

* The Quest Study Bible, New International Version
Copyright 1994 by The Zondervan Corporation
General Editor: Marshall Shelley.

Note: Some of you may have already read this piece. It was originally posted on HillCountryGal’s blog(please see links). I was her guest blogger. If anyone is curious as to why I posted anonymously, just ask me. I assure you it was necessary at the time. I must also point out that it was HillCountryGal who first saw something in me that I did not. She took the time, patience and energy to pull this out of me. And believe me, it wasn’t easy. She is one amazing woman. And I am proud to call her my friend.