"Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the church and so jeopardize their salvation." -- Bishop Michael Sheridan of the Catholic diocese of Colorado Springs
The bishop's quote is semantically indistinguishable from the statement "vote this way or we'll break your kneecaps".
This quote shows one of the ugliest aspects of religion: the desire of those in high places to utterly control the believers below them. It boils down to "I say that God says that this is bad. If you disagree, you're going to fry." There's no way to check whether the bishop's pronouncement is valid.
I think that three things should happen here:
1) Bishop Sheridan should be immediately removed from office
2) The Catholic diocese of Colorado Springs should lose its tax-exempt status and be taxed as a lobbying organization
3) The Catholic diocese of Colorado Springs should be investigated and prosecuted under the RICO laws.
I am also disturbed because I cannot tell if Bishop Sheridan is someone who arrived at his current religious state because he thought about it and decided that the Catholics were the best thing out there, or if he's one of the unthinking sheeple who happens to be good at administration. If I could talk to him for a bit, I'd easily be able to find out. If he was the thinking sort, he'd be fun to argue with. If he was the unthinking sort, he'd reject my counterarguments out of hand with statements like "but the pope says that...".
The more I learn about religion, the more I appreciate Judism. It has two key facets that no other religion I know of has: 1) it actively discourages converts, and 2) it actively encourages doubt.
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