Arguably, there will always be a need for religion. However, religion is man-made and therefore fallible.
Is the Pope fallible, this man who is God's representative on Earth? Roman Catholics have always believed in the infallibility of the Pope. Therefore popes throughout the ages have got away with all manner of misdemeanors, some of them quite shocking. The history of the Roman Catholic church makes disturbing reading. Anyone who was a free-thinker could be punished by torture and death. The faithful had to be kept in line and forced to believe in all kinds of superstitions of which there is no need to elaborate. Indeed they still remain a tenet of the Faith.
Priests and nuns, in taking a vow of chastity, contravene the laws of nature. It is not surprising, though none the less shocking and reprehensible, that these upholders of the Faith, held in awe and respect by their congregations, should succumb to temptations which take different forms, as an outlet for their repressed desires. The fact that these affairs have been covered up to protect the institution of the Church only serves to exacerbate and compound the felony of which they stand guilty. The Church is discredited and can no longer be seen as a fount of spirituality. The hypocrisy has been exposed.
Those early Christian saints, living in poverty and simplicity in their rustic dwellings and caves, St David, St Piran, St Breoc, St Non, St Ia, St Pedrog, St Columba - to name a few - must be recognised as embodying the true values of the Faith, living an unblemished life in the service of God and their communities, and not these turbulent priests of today who are unable, because of their human failings and pent-up desires, to live up to their religious precepts and accord with the holy scriptures. Who knows, it may be heralding the end-time for the Catholic religion and the advent of a restoration of the Celtic Church, swept away by the Synod of Whitby AD 664.
The end-time of the Catholic imperium seems imminent, vastly changed as it is already from my childhood even in its immediately post-Vatican II upheavals. With the insistence on a celibate male clergy, its dogmatic stances opposed to contraception, and its dominant mindset willing to crush dissent, I cannot see it long for this world. In a smaller, more communal, less earth-shattering manifestation, it may adapt as you conclude in a renewed humility.
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