I Believe

I believe that if ever the son of a Jewish god of love said:
“Do this in memory of me”
it was an invitation,
not a command.

I believe that if the man who said:
“Suffer the little children to come unto me”
were to see little children being forced to go to church,
forced to sit still and in silence,
forced to parrot dead white men’s words
that they do not understand,
he would weep.

The same people who campaign against sex, nudity and violence in film and television
expose their children to images of a bleeding, dying man
hanging on a prehistoric instrument of torture,
dressed only in a crown of thorns and loin cloth,
on a weekly basis.
They explain to their children that this man was tortured to death in order to save them.
They tell them that sex outside marriage is a mortal sin,
that homosexuality is an abomination.

What then happens to their minds and souls
when priests they are told are good and trustworthy rape them?
when they are forced to serve their rapists on the altar?
when they are forced to listen to the holy word of God out of their rapist’s lips?
when they are forced to accept the body of Christ from their rapist’s hands?
Where do they go in their minds in order not to run away screaming?

And what of the rest of the congregation?
How do they live with themselves?
How do they “not notice” or “forget” or “forgive”
the rape of their own children?

I believe that if the man who chased the money lenders out of the temple
were to see his priests buggering little boys and girls in his church buildings
he would do far more than chase them out of his father’s house.

I believe that there is no excuse of ignorance for collusion with and enabling child rapists
by priests and bishops and cardinals and popes
whose seven year training and daily bible reading
must have shown them the words
spoken over two thousand years ago by an illiterate carpenter’s son:
“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he cast into the sea,
than that he should harm one hair on the head of one of these little ones.”

I believe that churches all over the world are full of shattered and lost souls
of those who dissociated from their enslaved and imprisoned bodies
rather than experience the rape and the denial and the hypocrisy

I believe that if there are such things as abominations
and eternal fires of damnation,
that is where child rapists belong.
And I believe that if we are to heal from treating child rapists as if they were gods,
we must all cry and wail and scream and demand justice;
we must feel the pain these acts cause all of us
and accept responsibility for comforting, believing and supporting the victims
as they confront their rapists and the church which protected the rapists
and slowly reclaim their shattered and lost souls;
we must envision and create a world of equality,
where nobody takes or is given power
which they can abuse in the name of Christ
or with the excuse of ignorance
or inability to control themselves
at the expense of one single child.