Dear Kirsten A. Powers
 
Here is why you need to rethink becoming a Catholic.
 
Remember innocent until proven guilty.
 
What right have you to say a baby does not have God in her until she is baptised?
 
What right do you have to accuse a girl who uses an abortion pill of murder? And especially when you will not really see the "child" as the same or as important as a fully grown adult.
 
What right have you to accuse some human beings (okay you are not being specific about who but you are accusing) of being evil enough to turn their back on their loved ones for all eternity preferring to suffer in Hell instead?
 
The treatment of women by Christ and the Church violates the reasonable rule, "Faith should enhance and risk offending and harming nobody unnecessarily. If the faith is nonsense, there should be no harm done."
 
Science is based on the work of self-correcting scientists and experimenters. It is not based on what they say but on what the tests show. There is no way that God can be that important when it is not testable. The testable takes priority - period. And if you are putting God first and there is no God then that is cruel and you are passing on that cruelty to others.

The Church claims the right to tell science that its discoveries do not refute its doctrines. It is not up to a faith system to tell a system that is based on evidence and self-correction that it cannot contradict it. Scientifically speaking, a pope has no right to say that science and religion can avoid contradicting each other when he is not a scientist. Yet the pope tells that very lie.

What right have you to undermine secularism by joining an organisation that battles it? Secularism is a fundamental human right.

The secular state needs to see religion not as a possible revelation from God but something man says is a revelation. God's role in revelation is irrelevant for you are still taking man's word for it. Religious claims are not testable which gives the religious man an advantage if he can bring his faith to the public square. How can you refute a man who says God told him he wants the rule he gave in the Bible for an allegedly adulterous woman to be given a potion that will catch her out by poisoning her if she is guilty reinstated? If you want to base your life on untestable notions then you cannot object if somebody else does the same but with totally different notions.

Until each nation treats religious opinions as merely human opinions, the door to blasphemy laws coming in will always be open. Blasphemy is really about refusing to let people realise it if a religion is man-made nonsense.
 
If there is no God, we are telling ourselves that the suffering of others is part of his plan and somehow justified. That is a very serious thing to get wrong. It is not a trivial matter – it is suffering we are talking about.

The better person finds meaning in bringing good about in spite of evil instead of thinking that evil is part of a plan and ultimately for the best. You have no right to condone the horrendous suffering of others so that you can feel it has a purpose. You have no right to condone divine cruelty. Doing that is really just about how you feel. It is selfish.

If there is a choice between good and God then choose good. This principle is insulted by the very concept of God. God does not come first and is a contradiction in terms for God by definition is what comes first or alone matters. Christians are not really any better than anybody else so what is the point of emphasising God? The notion that God and morality are inseparable is nonsense and is an immoral notion. What kind of person is more worried about how hurting a baby offends God than about the agony the baby suffers?

And if Christ is not God the Catholic is worshiping a false God.

And if the bread and wine at communion are not Jesus then they are idols.
 
Catholic belief is that the Eucharist is the risen Jesus - not a single Bible text supports this view. An unbiased reading is that if the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Jesus then it is the dead flesh and blood. This is black magic. Jesus was another do-gooder false prophet and the Jews were right that his ministry was heretical. You don't seem to care that he called a vulnerable woman a dog just because she was Gentile and wanted help for her daughter.
 
The papacy has caused untold persecution of Catholics by holding on to the papal states and to this day refuses to admit that papal infallibility was unheard of in the early Church.
 
There is extremism in attitude and extremism in outlook. Christianity is extremist the latter way.

The Bible believer today does not stone homosexuals but he approves of the fact that it was done in the past at God's behest in the Bible. Jesus upheld the Old Testament doctrine that it is divinely inspired and its laws are infallible and given by God. He never apologised for the killings. He even said that killing the adulteress by stoning her is fine if you are without sin. If you praise violent scriptures as God's word, you take responsibility for the contents and the consequences. If somebody thinks the rules about stoning are in force today you need to take responsibility for that and the results. If you say a baby should be allowed to suffer by God and that God should not intervene you take responsibility in the sense that you are saying that if there is a God you would tell him not to intervene. You would do the same thing if you were God. You are willing to say that what absolutely should not happen should happen. You are willing to take the chance. What does it all say about you? Never mind God. This is about you.
 
The Catholic who stones homosexuals to death will not be excommunicated but the one who says the pope is a pretender and not the real head of the Church will be. This is still a religion that in a sense allows murder.
 
What kind of person honours a book that contains all that violence as the word of God and to be respected above all books?
 
What right have you to join a dogmatic organisation when the story of Jesus is so controversial in the scholarly world? The Church knows no more about Jesus than anybody else and is dogmatic and refuses to change its mind when new evidence arises that contradicts its beliefs. It still goes on about Adam and Eve though their existence has been disproved. It lies that the story in the Bible about them is symbolic though there is no evidence and such stories were meant literally in the context of the times.
 
Remember by joining the Church and if it is unnecessarily harmful or in error and if it is putting forward man's doctrines as those of God then you are guilty by association. Man cannot claim to be God for he will be caught out so it is less pressure and more effective if he pretends to have the word of God. The believer says, "People have a right to hear God’s word". The other side of that argument is that if it is not the word of God then people's rights are being violated.
 
I do not admire your ignorant decision to become Catholic and there is simply no excuse. Religious people are famous for being told the truth and ignoring it. Whoever stays in a religion that cannot show it is the truth is guilty of hindering the truth or enabling lies to be told.