In my very Catholic high school, I learned Death Penalty wrong

I went to a very strict all-girls Catholic high school run by the strictest nun on Staten Island. In my high school, we were taught in no uncertain terms that the death penalty was a crime against Christ. I remember because I wrote a paper for it at the time, and my teacher ripped me a new one.

Now, the Catholic church no longer concerns itself with the death penalty, poverty or injustice in the world - all we care about is abortion. The Catholic Church has gone backward from about 1979. Does anyone else see this??? The Catholic Church used to support many fine movements - now they support pro-life candidates even if they support the death penalty, support cutting food stamps and Medicaid, even if they support cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us at the cost of cutting programs for the neediest among us.

I don't know where the Catholic Church of my childhood/teenage years has gone.

I think we're currently suffering from a split personality. If you look at Catholics nationally, we're pretty evenly split politically. Honestly, I think the right wing of the faith are wearing out our tolerance.

when I was ten. A stuffed shirt of a priest gave the class a lecture about how women were supposed to die in childbirth because the baby might be a boy.

That did it. I announced to my parents that I was an atheist, and I was outta there.

The priest was later defrocked when it came out that he'd been having an affair with one of the lay teachers at the school. I never heard whether or not he'd branched out to altar boys.

Pope John XXIII let a breath of fresh air into that institution, and if his reforms had been allowed to stand and his life not cut short, the church would be a very different and welcoming institution.

Alas, the conservatives took control again, and dragged the whole business back into the remote past. They have no idea that they're killing the church. They don't care that they're killing women. They don't even care that their stupid anti condom policies in Africa are killing their favored sex, men.

They lost any connection to Christ's teachings many years ago. I'll continue to watch them wither from a distance.

"women were supposed to die in childbirth because the baby might be a boy."

I really don't get the point of what he was trying to say.

of a very conservative, all-girls, Catholic HS, I can tell you that nowadays it's ALL about abortion. Not a word about the war that the Vatican opposed, or capital punishment.

I'm glad I got out when I did. It's enough to make a liberal bang her head against her desk in frustration.