In Defense of How the Catholic Church has Kept Up with the Times

Many of the Church’s opponents complain that She is old-fashioned and stubbornly locked in Her ways.  For example, they often point to Her refusal to budge from Her long-standing teachings on birth control.  One simply has to wonder how these people can think that their few hours of recreational philosophizing can stand up to the framework for understanding the moral reprehensibility of birth control that has been constructed over centuries by celibate priests who have plumbed the bible for penetrating nuggets of wisdom.

But even on topics as critical to salvation as birth control, the Church has not been inflexible to the needs of Her flock.  Condoms are naturally banned because “every action which proposes to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil (2370, Catechism of the Catholic Church).”  Generously, the Church has proscribed the rhythm method, which of course is not evil because only a fool would actually consider it capable of preventing pregnancy. 

The Church is equally lenient in Her understanding on other important issues. For example, She recognizes that the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy could no longer mean that we should not work because people need to have someplace to go to breakfast after mass.  She has also shifted the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday so that mass could be celebrated at the beginning of the week instead of at the end, allowing priests to shift the focus of their homilies from how the flock screwed up during the week to how to avoid screwing up in the first place.  Finally, She continues to show great empathy with Her flock by having reduced the number of times a year one must keep the Sabbath holy by going to mass from 52 to 4, including Christmas and Easter. 

The Church has also publicly recognized that truth is not absolute but has a simple relative quality dependent upon time and place.  For example, for centuries the earth was the center of a tiny universe and masturbation caused blindness.  Another example is that taking the Lord’s name in vain used to mean, to unenlightened Hebrews, that you should never say God’s name (a trick they achieved by dropping all the vowels from His name, thereby making it unpronounceable).  Today, true believers are encouraged to put God’s name everywhere, from billboards to WWJD playground kickballs. What matters most, of course, is an impressive stand with the truth and not backing down to whatever is currently considered to be the lies of Satan.

One particularly ignorant group of trouble-stirrers are Feminists who bad mouth the Church. Despite the fact that God clearly has only a Fatherly, Sonly, or Neutral aspect, the Church has taken an impressively forward-thinking stand on the role of women by separating them from the ox, ass, and manservant and giving them their own commandment.  Feminists also fail to note that the Church has done away with the little hats Paul dictated women wear to mass or that men are encouraged not to lord it over their wives that it is the husband who really has the voice that counts and that the wife is subservient to him. 

The Church has also made efforts to update our Lord’s words where they might be confusing. The commandment “Have no other Gods before me” needed clarification since we all know that God is limited to three persons in the Trinity, a doctrine clearly outlined in the bible. As a consequence, all petitions and requests for forgiveness must go through the proper channels of a priest, for you cannot find God without Jesus, can’t find Jesus without the Spirit, and can’t find the Spirit without the Church.  Another example is how the Church has altered the Lord’s Prayer from Jesus’ original, adding important clarifications such as “who Art in Heaven” for those who might have been confused and thought God actually spent any time on earth with us and “on earth as it is in heaven” which makes a nice tie in with the Church’s sole basis for Her authority with that keys of the kingdom stuff and “what you hold bound on earth, I hold bound in heaven.”

Occasionally the Church does seem to lapse in inspiration and take a step backwards, such as when She mandated that men could only marry one woman. One the flip side, however, one must really admire the extraordinary leniency of the ecclesiastical body when they redefined the word “marriage” to allow people to actually get married without having children as their sole motive, although the damned homosexuals would take advantage of the Church’s progressive nature and completely soil any meaning the word has left if they could.

Despite Her Divine insight, there are still issues the Church struggles with, such as adultery. Since marriages outside the Church aren’t recognized, sex with a nonbeliever clearly isn’t adultery. Additionally, whenever good Catholics use annulment to get around the “No divorce” mandate, thereby saying the marriage never took place, they suddenly find themselves in the hot water of having committed adultery instead.  The Church has hopes, however, for a philosopher of the caliber of Aquinas to come along and rescue them.