YeOldeCurmudgeon |
12-21-2022 10:07 AM |
The scenes with the nuns and priest were disturbing. While I never experienced anything that cruel in Catholic schools, not from nuns -- some were cold and austere -- I did go to a military school run by the Christian brothers. I recall one time a brother smacked a 7th grader in the face so severely that he was bloodied and they had to call an ambulance. Of course, he was the biggest kid in our class and the brother was trying to show his dominance. The celibacy rule created monsters. These people were very frustrated and they took it out on the kids.
In the TV program 1923, the beatings took place at an Indian reservation where they viewed the Native people as inferior in those days, so perhaps things like this did happen. I left the church when I was 19 and at the time I never thought about how that experience with the violent brothers influenced me -- that was far from the only such experience, just that one was the worst -- but with perspective I can see why now. That church that burned thousands of women alive in the Middle Ages was and still is a sick institution -- just think of their view of abortion where they value a fetus over the life of the mother. Just think of how they support unjust wars in other countries. Just think of how the denomination never condemned slavery and because of that allowed it to continue in Brazil until the 1880s. Just think of how the Pope in the 1930s supported the fascist Mussolini.
At the same time there were good people in the church, and they have been its rebels, usually in the end leaving it. For example, I went to a Franciscan Catholic college and had a number of excellent teachers, but wouldn't you know it, I learned four of them left the order after I graduated, including the head of the Theology department.
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