Just recently I read a few tweets that came across my feed, and they made me angry. Considering the public nature of the tweets, I believe I have latitude to discuss them publicly.
A user called @camusdude recently tweeted the following:
“Catholics have no moral integrity. If they did, they wouldn’t fucking be Catholics!” “All Catholics, by remaining Catholics, are complicit in mass child rape. #GTFO” “Remaining a member of a corrupt organization (i.e. the roman Catholic Church) gives AT LEAST tacit support to its corruptness.” “I hate that I was a member of the Catholic Church for as long as I was. Thinking about it makes me want to vomit.”
Now, I believe in free speech, and thus the absolute freedom to express oneself as one desires. But, in freely speaking, one is also open to their words being debated. Hence, my reply to @camusdude and those like him.
I believe that condemning many innocent people for the evil actions of a few that they are not in conversation with is logically absurd, evil, and unloving. In this case, @camusdude is alleging that every single Catholic on the face of planet Earth is without moral integrity, complicit in child rape, and corrupt. He says this with an air of offended dignity, of moral outrage, and with considerable vehemence. But how are his words to be taken as a call to better living when his words advocate hate and utter idiocy?
Was every single German in Germany during Hitler’s reign complicit in the Nazis campaign of horror against the Jews? Was every single Muslim in the world complicit in the terrorist attacks on America on September 11? Was every citizen of the United States complicit in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? Surely not!
Thinking individuals do not lay guilt at the feet of innocents. If @camusdude would be consistent in his reasoning, and if he is a citizen of the United States, then he must turn himself in to the nearest authority as a murderer, because as an American citizen he is complicit in the deaths of many.
But, this is not so, because the ruling authority of any religion or nation is distant from those within their boundaries, whether physical or spiritual. A single Catholic is no more guilty of the crimes any other Catholic any more than I am guilty of murder should an American president wage an unjust war. I am not answerable for the crimes of my country.
Many Catholics are as horrified and angry about the evils done by those of the cloth, just as @camusdude seems to be, but he crosses a line by blaming them all.
Such a person is filled with hate and evil, and is no more righteous than those he rails against. I would say pity such a person, for theirs is a sad life.
a simple man 