More Thoughts of a Modern Day Skeptic

My friend responded to my response:

First of all, thank you. I normally would not force you to respond like that because you're busy with your own flock and family, but I guess it's been on my mind lately and I had to speak up. No one else I know is very engaged in philosophy these days.

And thanks for the reading suggestions. It's like I've been listening to the music of John Williams, and you have urged me to instead go find some Stravinsky.

Of course you can post my "essay." Thanks for thinking it worthy of posting.

I had written more in an earlier reply but I accidentally clicked off the page and it disappeared. Here's one thing I wanted to respond to...

I appreciate what you said about how a church is like any large organization -- there's going to be some horrible people, there's going to be some corruption. Both, I understand you're saying, should be condemned and fought against, but they can never be rooted out 100%.

I feel a church, though, should be held to a much higher standard. We're talking about an organization that governs how we live, speak, and think, and is the caretaker of many of our cultural traditions. It turns out though, that often churches are even worse than secular groups (unions for instance). I will keep harping on this because it's so repellant -- decades of covering up the rape of children. That's a little beyond "institutionally messed up." That's a criminal enterprise that, under what we normally think of as common sense and the law, should be dismantled, its assets sold, and its leaders jailed. But it goes on because it's such a part of our lives, has such a hold over us through, I would strongly argue, fear and superstition.

Anyway, that's outside the scope of your defense. I'm not asking you to stick up for the Catholics. But I do challenge your view that a church is like any other fallible, human organization. It's simply not. A church is an organization that we invite to govern our lives, our relationships, our thoughts...i would argue that while a church cannot be any better than your average trade union, but because of what a church demands of us, it should be far, far better, but is frequently worse.