If this is the type of logic the Vatican haters have, then I'll stay on the side of the hated
So you know about all the shit that went on in the name of the papacy? Even more basic, do you know what some of the popes actually got up to?
Pope Stephen VI
Stephen is chiefly remembered in connection with his conduct towards the remains of Pope Formosus, his last predecessor but one. Doubtless under pressure from the Spoleto contingent, and fueled by Stephen's fury with his predecessor, the rotting corpse of Formosus was exhumed and put on trial, in the so-called Cadaver Synod (or Synodus Horrenda), in January 897. With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to answer for the deceased pontiff, who was condemned for performing the functions of a bishop when he had been deposed and for receiving the pontificate while he was the bishop of Porto, among other revived charges that had been leveled against Formosus in the strife during the pontificate of John VIII. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VIPope John XII
An account of the charges leveled against him from Patrologia Latina includes:
Then, rising up, the cardinal priest Peter testified that he himself had seen [John XII] celebrate mass without taking communion. John, bishop of Narni, and John, a cardinal deacon, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time. Benedict, cardinal deacon, with other co-deacons and priests, said they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year-old bishop in the city of Todi... They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father's concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins and the canonical hours nor did he make the sign of the cross.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XIIPope Benedict IX
the only man ever to have sold the papacy
He reportedly led an extremely dissolute life, and also allegedly had few qualifications for the papacy other than connections with a socially powerful family
He was also accused by Bishop Benno of Piacenza of "many vile adulteries and murders."[2] Pope Victor III in his third book of Dialogues, referred to "his rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts. His life as a Pope so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IXPope Urban VI
Several among his peregrine cardinals, who had been shut up in Nocera with him, determined to make a stand: they determined that a pope, who by his incapacity or blind obstinacy, might be put in the charge of one of the cardinals. Urban had them seized, tortured and put to death, "a crime unheard of through the centuries" the chronicler Egidio da Viterbo remarked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VIPope Alexander VI
But it was not long before his passion for endowing his relatives at the church's and his neighbours' expense became manifest. To that end he was ready to commit any crime and to plunge all Italy into war.
In spite of the splendours of the Pontifical court, the condition of Rome became every day more deplorable. The city swarmed with Spanish adventurers, assassins, prostitutes and informers; murder and robbery were committed with impunity, and the Pope himself cast aside all show of decorum, living a purely secular life; indulging in the chase, and arranging dancing, stage plays and orgies (culminating in the debaucherous Banquet of Chestnuts of 1501) within the Vatican itself.
Alexander gave away the temporal estates of the papacy to his children as though they belonged to him. The secularization of the church was carried to a pitch never before dreamed of, and it was clear to all Italy that he regarded the papacy as an instrument of worldly schemes with no thought of its religious aspect. During his pontificate the church was brought to its lowest level of degradation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VIPope Leo X
Various indications point to Leo's homosexuality. The principal evidence is the account of the historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) who, just a few years after Leo's death, wrote[1] in 1525: At the beginning of his pontificate most people deemed him very chaste; however, he was afterwards discovered to be exceedingly devoted - and every day with less and less shame - to that kind of pleasure that for honour's sake may not be named.
When he became Pope, Leo X is reported to have said to his brother Giuliano: "Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it."
His extravagance offended not only people like Martin Luther, but also some cardinals, who, led by Alfonso Petrucci of Siena, plotted an assassination attempt. Eventually, Pope Leo found out who these people were, and had them followed. The conspirators died of "food poisoning." Some people argue that Leo X and his followers simply concocted the assassination charges in a moneymaking scheme to collect fines from the various wealthy cardinals Leo X detested.
Leo's lively interest in art and literature, to say nothing of his natural liberality, his alleged nepotism, his political ambitions and necessities, and his immoderate personal luxury, exhausted within two years the hard savings of Julius II, and precipitated a financial crisis from which he never emerged and which was a direct cause of most of what, from a papal point of view, were calamities of his pontificate. He created many new offices and sold them, a move seen by later Catholics as being "shameless". He sold cardinals' hats. He sold membership in the "Knights of Peter".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XAre you absolutely certain that you want to commit your spirituality to an organisation like this?
And it's not about being a Catholic, my grandmother for eg. was a very devout Catholic and she had NO loyalty to Rome. In fact she saw Rome more as a dated embarrassment to Catholicism.
