SPIRITUAL COMMUNISM

The Pope, Catholics, and the forgiveness business........... I once dated a Catholic girl who was so sweet she’d give you diabetes if she kissed you and was so pretty you just knew you weren’t good enough for her, that she was meant for a God or a starting quarterback on a really good football team. This girl would forgive and forgive every murderer, every liar, and almost everyone for everything except taking false gods, missing mass on Sunday, and being mean to animals. She was maddening. “It’s all right, Howard, God forgives you,” drove me fucking nuts. I don’t know what happened to her. I hope she had a happy life, but I have this sneaky suspicion that she drove at least two men to suicide. She forgave them to death.... The only thing about her type of forgiveness was that it only meant something to her, not to the Howards of her life. What happened between us? You can't dump a sweet girl like her. She dumped me, for a sick fox or something that she found on the beach.

One of the great lessons Pope John supposedly taught us was forgiveness. The Pope can afford to forgive everybody because that’s what a Pope is supposed to do. The Pope isn’t living real life. He is cloistered, doesn’t have to earn a living, get re-elected to office, keep a business from falling into the ocean, or work for a boss who is an all time prick. Most importantly he doesn’t have a bitch of a wife who wants a new sofa, car, better apartment, a toilet seat left down, and three orgasms per night every night, or else. He isn’t shackled to some slob who may beat him up any time he steps out of line, or who gets drunk twice a week and comes home and pukes all over the bed, or is having sex with someone else behind your back. So he kisses the guy who tried to blow him away and we’re all supposed to learn from that. What I learned was that the Pope stuff wouldn’t work for a poor old lady on the street who got mugged. She’d just get mugged again by the same guy.

The problem with all great philosophies is that none of that stuff works at street level. But this particular Pope connected with every level. He presented a consistent Catholic doctrine to millions of people. Catholicism, like many religions when practiced totally, will work; meaning you will be successful, you can make good money, have nice things, but you always donate huge amounts of your money to charities. When you look at Catholicism in its totality as presented by the Pope, it not only means no abortions, stem cell research, gay marriage, or a million other things; it also means helping the poor, providing health care for everyone, no war in Iraq, and an accountability to God for failure to provide for others less fortunate—around the world. It doesn't mean you set up a phony tax deduction or a foundation. It means that you give.

I choose to call Catholicism, Spiritual Communism. Because the Pope wasn’t kidding.

It is forgiveness that this Pope is most noted for and it is this facet of Catholicism that most affects people. When forgiveness is passed down through the parishioner class we have some real problems in the real world. The endless misapplied forgiveness of the Catholic Church that kept those child molesters roaming free for twenty or more years. It also explains how the Mafia thugs and various international terrorists can claim Catholicism. The key to Catholic forgiveness is confession, and then penance. As a Catholic, I know (wrongly) that no matter what I do I can go to confession and be forgiven; ten Hail Mary’s and a few Our Fathers will fix stealing, lying, and cheating on my wife. Murder will take a couple of dozen rosaries, two Apostles Creeds, and a visit to the sick in some hospital. People piss and moan about the rigidity of the Catholic Church when what we should piss and moan about is the endless pardons for egregious sins that a forgiving Church always seems to supply to the sinner.

This idea is taught to Catholic kids in a little book called Catechism that is a simplified version of the faith. There is a little segment in the Catechism that goes

There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. "There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest. Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin

Of course in the pure spiritual sense of the Church a “bad confession” is no confession at all; that’s because God knows what you’re trying to pull and he’s going to fuck you when this is all over unless you are really sorry, seek forgiveness, and don’t repeat the sin forever. The really cool and super hip sinner doesn’t begin to understand that part of it, so he just goes to confession in order to feel good about himself for a week. Til the next crime/confession/penance cycle. It is the cycle of sin, repeated over and over again, that the American Catholic bishops didn’t recognize as unforgivable sin.

She, like the priests and flocks, have forgotten one thing about confession and forgiveness: you can’t be forgiven if you haven’t asked for it, and a phony confession means nothing.

'Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.'" Cyprian, To the Clergy, 9 (16):2 (A.D. 250).

That means a fake confession is killing Jesus all over again; you ain't going nowhere but down. Doctrine further states that,

God is not mocked.' God cannot be mocked, nor deceived, nor deluded by any deceptive cunning. Yea, he sins the more, who, thinking that God is like man, believes that he evades the penalty of his crime if he has not openly admitted his crime....

Which means you won’t get away with it. In the Catholic religion there is also something called “retention.” The priest can retain certain sins and you ain’t been forgiven. This little goodie is unknown to most lay Catholics and may not be practiced by a lot of priests.

Perhaps child molesting priests thought that if they confessed they’d be cleared and the bishops to whom they confessed would actually have the power to forgive them. They are wrong. They are going to hell for molesting those children. Catholics who murder are not necessarily forgiven. They may repent, but the redemption lies above the clergy.

So while the Pope is in the forgiveness business, he did not forgive Mugabe, Hitler, or the rest of the serial criminals in our midst. He “retained” their sins. So the next time you hear about forgiveness remember both “retention,” and that a fake confession is killing Christ all over again. Some people are not forgiven, no matter how much they give to the Church, how many times a day they go to mass, or how many confessions and penances they do.

So that phony Catholic son of a bitch down the street? He will get his. Feel good now?