Freethought Papers, Essays & Letters

Thoughtful Activist Opposition to Religion

• Historically developed control factors which subordinate and belittle women and children: e.g., “Augustine was not the first child to suffer a beating at the hands of an adult who felt he was acting in the child’s best - future - interests.  Nor is he the first adult to have written about his experience of being beaten as a child.  But he was enormously influential as Christianity’s greatest theologian since Paul.... One wonders what life in the Christian world would have been like had Augustine instead offered a powerful theological indictment of the beating of children by adults.” (From: “The Childs’ Song - The Religious Abuse of Children” by Donald Capps.) 

• The Church definition of women as “dirty” and subordinate to men because of menstruation and excluding them from from the church hierarchy and priesthood: ”.....women and young girls who took church vows have been sexually victimized by priests and others in the male-controlled church hierarchy.  According to the St.  Louis Post-Dispatch, which obtained a copy of the report, a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholics nuns -- about 40% of the national total -- have suffered some kind of sexual trauma”, (From: “Confidential Study Reveals Church Abuse Of Nuns”: John T. Chibnall, St.  Louis University, co-author of the research summary.) 

Instances of Violence Against Women and Children 

1.     CANADA; BRITISH COLUMBIA, B.C. PRIEST CONVICTED OF BUGGERY.

2. NEWFOUNDLAND BROTHER GETS 4 YEARS. Mount Cashel Christian brother Alan Ralph was sentenced to 4 years after pleading guilty to 11 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys at Mount Cashel orphanage.

3. Ballarat Bishop accepts criticism in sex abuse case.

4. Irish paedophiles force children to have sex with animals.

5. Quite exceptional depravity – (Christian) Brothers - Senate Committee, Canberra, part of "Lost Innocents: Righting the Record," August 2001 The Christian Brothers: Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun. 

6. PRIEST ACCUSED OF ASSAULTING GIRL. Catholic priest Hillary Maher, 42, was charged with 6 counts of sexual assault on a girl between the ages of 14-16 in the early 1980s while he was a parish priest in Stephenville. 

7. “I saw Brother --- use a pool table stick to hit children if they would not have anal sex with him. Children were given cold showers then strapped. If I told any Brothers that another Brother tried to have sex with me, I would be strapped." 

8. "The abuse perpetrated by our own brothers on the victims and their families is truly horrific," said the Rev. Joseph Chinnici, minister of the Oakland-based Province of St. Barbara and leader of Franciscans in seven Western states. 

9.  SUPERIOR COURT judge ruled that there was enough evidence in the lawsuits against to sue the cardinal (Bernard Law, Boston, NY) also, as one observer notes, 'Suing Law is almost like suing the pope.' 

10. “Reuters News Service in 2004 told the world of a Roman Catholic order of nuns in Ireland, known as the Congregation of the Sisters of Mary, who had ‘apologised unconditionally for the physical and emotional trauma its nuns had inflicted on children raised in its orphanage and schools.”  This abuse had been uncovered in a television expose of enormous maltreatment in Dublin in the 1950’s and 1960’s. (From: “The Sins of Scripture - Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love”, by John Shelby Spong.)

11. In 1766 at Abbeville, France, a teenage boy was accused of singing irreverant songs, mocking the Virgin Mary, marring a crucifix, and wearing his hat when a religious procession passed.  Criticising the church [Roman Catholic] was punisable by death.  The youth, Chevalier de la Barre, was sentenced to have his tongue cut out, his right hand cut off, and to be burned at the stake.....The clergy demanded death, warning of the dire spread of doubt.....Parliament showed mercy by allowing the youth to be decapitated instead of mutilated and burned alive.  He was first tortured....then executed.” (From: “Holy Horrors - An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness”, by James A. Haught).  

12. “Millions of men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity.  What has been the effect of coercion? To make half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” (From: “Notes on Virginia”, by Thomas Jefferson).