Why does this get me so angry?

I was raised Catholic. Went to Catholic school. Spent large portions of my life attending mass for holy days of some sort or another. Descended from a long line of believers. And yet, nothing about the Catholic church ever rang true to me. There was just absolutely zero resonance. I never felt that the things that happened in that building had any relevance to my life. At some point I began learning about Buddhist philosophy and to me that seemed more intuitive and less likely to make you perform mandated rituals that (to me) were nothing more than silly rules made up by a man-made institution with no correlation to actual spiritual exploration or becoming a better person. I'm not identifying myself as Buddhist just stating that it makes more sense to me. Catholicism is simply not a practical religion and I am a ridiculously practical person.

Long story short, the ongoing (I almost said "recent" but this is hardly recent) scandals of pedophilia and the church's complete denial of responsibility or consequences has me enraged and sickened. If any of this happened to my child I could not be responsible for my actions. I truly believe that the institution of the Catholic (and many other) churches encourages deviant behavior and makes a happy home for deviants.

A memory just came back as I typed this, Father Richard in my hometown parish, Our Lady of Grace, in Hinckley, OH. Not only did he embezzle from the church, but I distinctly remember being very creeped out as a 13 year old girl at the non-platonic feel of his hugs. And I remember my mom laughing about it. Which indicates to a kid that you best take care of it yourself by avoiding the situation all together because you will not get parental support. Which leads me to a whole different area of betrayal of trust by a parent and how I am determined not to do that to my own kid. And I think, how did all of these molested kids feel? I'm sure that many of their parents were more religious than mine and would beat their kids silly for the suggestion that a holy man would behave in such an inappropriate manner.

I know Dowd makes a living being controversial, but her recent columns on the church hit the nail on the head.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opinion/07dowd.html

things to try

Since my concerted efforts are getting me no where in the weight loss department I'm going to make 2 changes:

1. follow this recommendation in the NYTimes to do heavy weights to fatigue

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06real.html

2. (absolute GROAN) start tracking again. I f*@king HATE tracking. It makes me miserable. But there has to be an answer to the fact that I am spending more time exercising now than I have since I was a kid and worked on horse farms and STILL cannot lose weight.

I hate being (almost) 40.

Appeals court overturns FCC rule on net neutrality - latimes.com

Another victory for corporate interests while sticking it to the average person or small organization. I understand that bandwidth is not equal to public airwaves, the infrastructure is a corporate investment, but this opens the door to censoring available content. As someone who lives in a major metropolitan area and still has a relatively slow internet connection, the effect that this has on rural areas and access to on-line material is disturbing.

From another perspective, as a community college teacher, this could have an impact on the availability of on-line courses as well as they frequently incorporate video and heavy graphics to try to bring the course to life from a distance. I hope it gets appealed.

Appeals court overturns FCC rule on net neutrality - latimes.com

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