Slip out the back, Jack

In the summer of 2002, I was at mass one Sunday when the priest began a sermon in which he excoriated then Democratic nominee for Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm for being a pro-choice Catholic.  I listened politely for a few moments, until it became increasingly clear that the priest was telling the flock for whom to vote (not Granholm).  At which point I stepped out of the pew, genuflected, and left.

I have never been back.

Since the Catholic Cardinals elevated John Paul II to the papal throne the Church has drifted ever rightward unabated.  I have never understood the need for progressive Catholics to remain in the Church fold hoping for some miraculous change to be enacted in the Church.  If the Cardinals electing the even more conservative Pope Bendict XVI wasn't the final catalyst, maybe these utterings by Catholic League leader Bill Donohue should be.  Donohue (he of the misogynistic, racist, homophobic wing of the Church) says he would be more than happy, and Bendict agrees, and that the Church would be better off if the roughly half of its parishioners who do not fall in strict line with Catholic Doctrine were to be booted out of the Church.

What more motivation could progressive Catholics possibly need to leave that increasingly irrelevant organization?  Get out the door already, for Christ's sake--stop tacitly supporting a Church that doesn't even want you.

Peace,
emaycee