A Cross to Bear

Having “a cross to bear” suggests having a heavy burden of responsibility or a problem.

The burdens that the members of the Roman Catholic Church have had to bear, especially in the United States, are many. As a person who was raised as a Catholic in the United States, I do not find the accusations surprising, but I do find the behavior of many American Catholics astonishing.

Commenting upon the similarity between a cross and a protest sign, this piece is indeed a protest against the things I find unacceptable in the Catholic Church, some of which are listed below. The piece was influenced by the style of the Byzantine Icons, making it, in a sense, an iconoclastic icon.

Written along the sides of the piece are the following facts:

The Roman Catholic Church, officially known as the Catholic Church, is the world’s largest Christian church and represents over half of all Christians and one-sixth of the world’s population.

Pope Paul VI said, “What the church has taught down through the centuries, we also teach: that there is only one Church.”

The Vatican has insisted that, while communities separated from the Catholic Church can be instruments of salvation, only those with apostolic succession can be properly termed “churches”.

A required belief of the Catholic Church in matters of religious doctrine is the infallibility of the Pope.

The Catholic Church teaches: “Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his landmark encyclical letter “Humanae Vitae” (Latin, “Human Life”), which emphasized the Church’s constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. Contraception is “any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill and all other such methods.

Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” also affirmed the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, and declared both abortion and euthanasia to be murder.

Pope John Paul II stated that the death penalty was appropriate only when it was the only way to defend society.

In 1994 the encyclical “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” explained that the Church follows the example of Jesus, who chose only men for the specific priestly duty.

Several major lawsuits emerged in 2001 claiming that priests had sexually abused minors. 4% of all priests who served in the US from 1950 to 2002 faced some sort of sexual accusation.

The median age at which former Catholics stopped considering themselves as Catholic is 21.