Hypocrisy

Wow. Welcome. You're in good company here. :)

By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, as lax as I found the Church to be, in the end, it didn't stop me from becoming extremely anti-religion, and later, an Atheist. My mom tried to lay on the guilt but she got over it pretty quick.

Interesting perspective, Jo. Thank you. :)

Well, I went to Catholic school, but again, this was in South America, where Catholicism is going to be different than the kind most Americans hear about, which are the Irish Catholics. However, my experience was that it was actually quite progressive, and you could talk to the nuns about sex and it was like talking to a nurse or a doctor. They were totally professional and really tried to be helpful. I think that's what happens when you have a religion that assumes that we're all sinners, no matter how hard we try. But Irish Catholics aside, a lot of that guilt stuff ended with the baby boomer generation. After that, the church got much more relaxed. The thing is, in Catholicism, there are sins and there are SINS, and sleeping with whores isn't exactly a SIN. The cool thing about Catholicism is that they have a bartering system in place: Confess, say however many Hail Mary's the priest assigns to you and you're home free! You don't even really have to repent, just "pay the fine".

I think if there is any guilt now, it comes from leaving an institution that has 2000 years of history behind it, (plus, you know, they were the original Christians after all) and unlike most other Christian sects, if you're Catholic, your family has probably been Catholic for as far back as you can trace the family tree. I can trace my own back about 500 years- all Catholic. Other Christian sects are not nearly as old, so how many generations of your family could you possibly offend if you leave?

Jo,

Thank you for the input.

How does that jive with Catholic school, though? That's where I understand the guild and fear are instilled, which is what causes much of the behavior later in life.

Do you see it differently?

Actually, I was raised Catholic- the Hispanic variety, and I know each variety has it's own flavor (just ask the Irish). But points one and two of your post, while they may hold true in other sects of Christianity, are not always true in Catholicism. Catholics are actually allowed to have sex for fun (with their spouses of course) as well as drink, smoke, and carouse as much as they want. I've been to lots of social events where the priests got drunk and were total gluttons about the food, and it was totally expected and ok. If you go to Italy, you'll see cardinals in fancy cars and villas, eating out at 5 star restaurants all the time. Growing up, it seemed to me like the Catholics were pretty lax in their expectations as opposed to, say, Southern Baptists. Shoot, we didn't even have to do much to get into heaven. We were already saved just by being Catholic.

I prefer atheist porn, thank you very much.

My father-in-law used to be a preacher. He has many stories of seeing big name preachers at conferences with loads of hookers. I think he became pretty disenchanted with the upper-echelons of organized denominations.
This same is true with the DNC and GOP. When they have their conventions in a few months, the local hooker business is going to be making lots of money. Jello Biafra covered this on one of his spoken word CDs.