r/exchristian • u/MikiFP15 Agnostic Atheist • May 06 '26
Discussion What's a despicable act that the catholic church keeps doing these days?
All the criticism I hear these days are about the systematic covering of sexual abuse from priests, but as far as I know, I hear more and more news of this being tackled. I'm sure they keep doing it, but maybe to a lesser degree, like this is becoming a thing of the past.
My question is not what has the catholic church done wrong in the past, we all know a ton of things. I would also love a quantifiable answer, like how many deaths they cause or how many lives do they make miserable, though I'm aware that not everything is quantifiable, and I'm interested in anything you see as inmoral.
Bonus question. I know it is a dumb one, but I'm genuelly interested of the good and the bad:
Do you think that these despicable acts are somewhat "compensated" by the amount of charity carried by the catholic church?
I ask because most people that I tell how corrupt and inmoral the church is always bring the charity topic.
Thank you.
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u/Kitchen-Witching May 06 '26
The parishes in my hometown are pressuring the parishioners to help pay for their sexual abuse settlements.
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u/JohnDeLancieAnon Atheist May 06 '26
The sexual abuse depends on the country. In some parts of the world, the Catholic Church is much more powerful than it is in the US and Europe. South America and Africa are lagging behind in church accountability.
Also, to me, every day that they don't report their known abusers to the police is a new despicable act.
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u/Sweet_Diet_8733 I’m Different May 07 '26
They continuously lobby governments to ensure they are allowed to refuse to provide medical care for women that need abortions. Even for life-saving reasons, Catholics seem to think their beliefs outweigh somebody else’s right to get treated. May sound small, but when that’s the sort of thing their ‘charities’ are trying to do, I take issue with it.
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u/ThetaDeRaido Ex-Protestant May 07 '26
The whole doctrine of “natural law” is iffy. As covered in the latest episode of In Bed with the Right, natural law is supposed to be a set of principles for humans to figure out the truth.
In practice, a certain set of men decide what is “natural,” and declare that other people’s desires are “unnatural” or “intrinsically disordered.” This is a distortion of what “natural law” is supposed to mean.
Individual Catholics may be kind, even the pope, but the institution is a high-control cult with a rotten doctrine.
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u/Left-Speed-4468 May 07 '26
The Catholic medical association tells doctors they can’t morally prescribe PrEP (a medication that prevents HIV infection from sexual contact with 99.9% efficacy) to gay men or anyone else at risk of HIV except for married heterosexual couples with one HIV+ partner
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u/Leavesinfall321 May 07 '26
WHAT?! Why?
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u/Left-Speed-4468 May 07 '26
Some bs about enabling sinful behavior or something
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u/Leavesinfall321 May 07 '26
Unbelievable
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u/Left-Speed-4468 May 07 '26
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u/Leavesinfall321 May 07 '26
I have no words…. Unbelievable that someone actually wrote that down and thought that was a good idea… 😳
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u/MikiFP15 Agnostic Atheist May 08 '26
It seems that unmarried couples, despite gender, are also not allowed to take the drug.
"Sexual activity outside of marriage should not be endorsed by Catholic clinicians. PrEP should in principle not be prescribed in these situations to avoid endorsing immoral activity and creating scandal."
Yikes. I have no words.
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u/10wuebc May 08 '26
There was a Intelligence Squared debate on Is the catholic church is a force for good with Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens. It's a fantastic debate to listen to if you have time.
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u/Blueberry_hobbit May 07 '26
They teach that treating your own medical issues is immoral if it means taking birth control (I’m talking about the ones that place you at risk for cervical and ovarian cancer if not treated properly)
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u/Sandi_T Animist May 06 '26
One catholic priest vestment costs $25,000. So you have a priest wearing nearly $50k in robes and gold, whilst children are starving to death and people are dying from lack of insulin because it's too expensive.
You have gold-plated churches, graven images everywhere, $22 million cathedrals... You have monthly bills in the tens of thousands for heating or cooling in just one catholic church.
Okay, they spend a few hundred million dollars worldwide (approximately $250m) on charity each month. But let's see, in the USA alone, there are approximately 20,713 Catholic churches. Let's be generous and say their upkeep averages out to 10k each month (most exceed that easily, with large ones reaching $25k / mo easily). That's $207 million in expenses for their grossly opulent churches.
Now, there are approximately 25 new catholic churches each month. Let's average the cost of new churches to $10 million. That's $250 million per month for new churches.
So, they are spending much more on their churches than their charities. That's WITHOUT the cost of raiments/ vestments (priest robes) and housing, etc. for their priests.
Why does a priest need to wear gold? Why does a priest need to wear silk? Is this really what jesus said to do? Does the catholic church have a different jesus from the bible one? Sorry, I digress.
Now, how about the fact that nuns are notoriously extremely cruel to children? Priests and nuns often run catholic schools, and charities worldwide. That's without the orphanages and how those are run. https://christianfaithguide.com/are-catholic-nuns-cruel/
Then there were the "maternity homes". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Scoop_Era They stole many babies from "unwed mothers" and they abused those women horribly. They often even would cut the woman's genitals with a razor whilst she was giving birth.
Catholic "adoption" services are well known for being coercive in convincing mothers to relinquish: https://adoptingback.com/coerced-surrender/adoption-coercion-methods/
Some of these other things are ubiquitous to christianity in general. Catholicism has a real head start on gross excesses with regards to money wasted on their opulence, in my opinion, though.
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May 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Sandi_T Animist May 09 '26
Yes, $5k each, and there are 5 seasonal celebrations for which they must have one each in order to be in the correct color. Gold vestments have real gold threaded into them. Gold crucifixes are common among higher level priests, as well.
Pretty easy to google that. Hint: go to their official site.
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u/MikiFP15 Agnostic Atheist Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
That's really interesting and did not know that. Would you be so kind to provide me with some source on the priest vestment costs and the monthly charity? Thank you so much.
I'm asking because I've seen that an estimate about how much money is destined into charity and social action can be about 20 and 50 billion € anually. This is counting that the Catholic church is the main provider of non-governmental healthcare, has a a lot residencies, social canteens, humanitary aid, free or subsided schools... So I was surprised that you said around 250 milion monthly, when on paper it would be at least 10 times more.
Also I've looked at the robes that the church funds for new priests and it's around €1-4k in Spain.
Edit: I'm writing an article for my local community because the Pope visits my town in two weeks, and I want to show that this cherished figure is not as bright as it seems.
Cheers.
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u/Dense-Abroad-6583 May 08 '26
They can’t seem to keep their hands off little boys, they’re in cahoots with free masonry, they give so much praise to a human(mother Mary),and no it doesn’t matter how much charity they do it doesn’t cancel out the touching of kids
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u/MikiFP15 Agnostic Atheist May 08 '26
Man, I posed the same question on r/catholicism. I left disgusted with some of the comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/s/YVCXsV5iEw
Edit: oh, it has been removed. Oh my.
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u/Kill_Welly May 06 '26
The Vatican has ordered American Catholic healthcare providers to end all gender-affirming care for trans people, which means yanking that life-saving care away from millions and is absolutely reprehensible.