catholics like torture and abortion

i know. it amazed me too.

according to the national catholic reporter and the pew research center for people and the press, catholics are more likely to approve of torture than their protestant counterparts. and way more likely to think its groovy than their secular counterparts.

bishop john h. ricard of pensacola-tallahassee, fla., member of the bishops’ committee on international policy thinks it's ``a reaction to 9/11, the horrible loss of life and the atrocities of those acting in the name of islam.''

from my friends who are recovering catholics, i'd say it's more due to their years and years of catholic schooling... or perhaps all the images of the saints self-flagellating, held up as role models...

and then there's all those opportunities to look at your savior every sunday, being tortured to death on a cross. ``if it was good enough for jesus, it's good enough for them!''

ahem.

moving on then... it would also appear that christians have just as many abortions as any other group except the catholics, who have more according to the center for reason.

The study, available as a downloadable report, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.

in my mind, when all this is juxtaposed with this study, done by the national center for policy analysis which describes significantly higher divorce rates in america's ``bible belt,'' you begin to get a picture that can be interpreted in at least three ways, none of which exclude the other two:

first possibility: that people with more freedom are more compassionate and behave more responsibly.

second possibility: the irresponsible desire to be controlled and have a sadistic desire to see others punished severely for being ``out of control.''

third: that as human beings, we're outgrowing our need for religious-flavored mind control.

I tend to favor door number three, while noting cynically that cable television is rapidly replacing religion for the mind control flavor du jour...