Hmmm....where to start. Let's start with the fact that
lightiris's diary manages to condemn the religious faith of a billion people--which is the definition of the "Church"--by the painfully obvious failings of its leaders.
Let's try a lesson in analogy, shall we?
Let's see if by that same exquisite logic, we progressive Americans ought to be painted as "evil," repressive, tyrannical, cruel and reactionary. Because, apparently, the new rule is we are what our leaders are.
Rant continues over the hill . . .
An Analogy: In lightiris's own words, with some obvious--and pointedly personal--modifications:
[George W. Bush], under whose administration the molestation and rape of hundreds of [Iraqi] children went virtually unchecked, is now leading a life of comfort and authority right in [Washington]. His bio on the [White House]'s website doesn't mention his immoral, unethical, and in the minds of some, criminal behavior. It doesn't mention that under his watch the lives of hundreds of children and their families were destroyed, their futures irrevocably harmed. He is a [good] man.
Let's travel abroad. [American] policies endanger the lives of women and children in developing nations all over the world. Extraordinary political pressure, religious coercion, and the calculated dissemination of factually inaccurate information are used to consistently deny women and children responsible health care and policy. Understand that no other organization with as many resources and as many spheres of influence is as obstructionist in matters of family planning as [America and Americans]. So I say this without any reservation: any organization, its leaders included, that would actively lobby to deprive third-world women of contraceptives and family planning choices should be roundly condemned by all people of conscience. I abhor the efforts of the [United States] to derail birth control initiatives in third-world nations as well as their intense lobbying efforts to derail and suppress United Nations funding for family planning programs. Such policies result in untold suffering, disability, and death to innocents who have no voice, no agency, and no recourse. Such policies, in my view, epitomize evil and under no circumstances should they be accepted or tolerated simply because they exist under the imprimatur of a particular [American politic].
I have read a great deal of commentary [in the MSM] about what a wonderful man [George Bush is], and, frankly, I'm appalled. There can be little doubt that the policies of [Americans], propped up by [hundreds of billions of dollars] a year simply to run [their] operations, are downright inhumane, injurious, and immoral. Yes, immoral. How else to describe concerted and prolonged efforts to prevent women from improving their lives, their health, and their children's lives? The results of such policies are plainly evident. There are millions of orphaned children in third-world nations as a direct result of [American]'s coercive policies. Fact: more than a million children, mostly in the third-world, are left motherless annually by the greater than 500,000 women who die of pregnancy-related complications each year. Many suffer devastating child-birth related injury. For example, in some cultures, women are ostracized from their homes and villages due to the extremely common (80,000 per year) but horrifyingly devastating rectovaginal fistula.
. . .
The resources of [America] would be better spent in helping women gain some control over their reproduction than in foisting their obviously injurious policies on vulnerable women and children. There is absolutely nothing [American] or [democratic] in the organized subjugation of women.
I'm sorry, the hypocrisy is stunning. Those who call themselves "[progressives]" turn their backs on the suffering of the world's poor women and children every time [America] is praised, every time they tolerate [George W. Bush] being held up as a [good] Man, every time they are respectful of the pomp and ceremony [read: atrocious squandering of money--let's see the number again: [hundreds of billions of dollars] per year] to prop up [a government] that actively seeks to retain a human hierarchy in which women are second class and are to have no real control over their reproductive future.
Now, I'm sure there will be people who counter that [America] does wonderful things. I imagine that's true. But what, pray tell, can effectively render the suffering of millions of women and children around the world an acceptable trade-off? What good can possibly overshadow such suffering?
Change just a few words, and the reality of our very own government's actions--which are astonishingly identical to those promoted by the Catholic hierarchy--are put in stark relief. And clearly, lightiris's screed proves that because our leader's and our government's policies are repressive, tyrannical, cruel and reactionary, so are we all.
Because there is no difference between a people and her leaders, right? That if one fails, the entire nation fails, right? Just like the Catholic Church, right?
Well, bullshit.
If we want to believe that the horrific actions of our current leaders don't represent all of us Americans, it's a polemic stretch of some real imagination to say that the Catholic "Church"--the human body that it comprises--represents every Catholic and the entire church itself.
John Paul II and his many failings doesn't represent the complete fullness of the faith any more than George W. Bush represents the complete fullness of America.
I, for one, am quite glad of that fact.