… For example, you mentioned in a recent newsletter of yours that its about time that the Catholic church be taken to task for the protection of pedophile priests. And I agree. Its intolerable that these sick men of the clergy are coddled and by extension encouraged to continue their behavior through executive fiat of their superiors. You did not ask the obvious question that comes up here, however. After all, the Catholic church has harbored perverts of all stripes since probably the days of the murderous St. Paul.
So why is this such a big issue all of a sudden? Why bring it up now, at this particular point in our history?

Let me give you a little background on myself. I grew up in New Orleans, La. It is contrary to popular belief not at all the vapid ‘party town’ that it is made out to be. New Orleans is actually a very, very conservative town of extremely narrow minded views once you get out of the French Quarter, and one of the chief shapers of that mindset is the Catholic church. When desegregation happened in the 1960’s the Church essentially stepped in and took over the education of the whites who fled to the suburbs. The whole idea of school vouchers and privatization of education at the grade- and high-school level is moot in New Orleans. There parochial control already exists. Wealthy and middle class New Orleanians send their kids to private schools, most of which as I said are under the auspices of the Catholic system. It is considered a stigma or a sign of low class there if you send your kid to public school. No big surprise, the public system is woefully under funded and incapable of meeting the needs of the children who grow up in it. And this perpetuates the great disparity of wealth in that town and the Third World-style class structure, which is a subject I won’t go into great detail here.

But another thing it does is indoctrinate the kids who are subjected to the Fascistic and guilt-ridden Catholic education model, effecting them in ways that are far more powerful than any distorted record of World War II put out by Steven Spielberg. From the time I started first grade in a private school operated by a Catholic family to my last home room period as a senior in a Catholic high school, I was made to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer (the ‘Our Father’) every single morning I went to class. The inherent message implicit here and burned into my brain through constant repetition was that I had a duty and obligation of loyalty not only to my country but also to my God (having grown up Catholic of course). And that these two were linked, basically one in the same. This line of thinking was no doubt part of why they must have put the ‘under God’ into the Pledge in the 1950’s, but taken to another extreme in that an entire testimonial is devoted to the subject. The whole system of Catholic education is rife with these kind of Medieval constructs, and it creates a very warped and dependent frame of mind in most people who are subjected to it. More of a willingness to submit to authority.

But I digress. My point here is that in my estimation the current flap about the pedophiles in the Catholic church and the current push to ramrod school vouchers on the unsuspecting public are interrelated events. The Catholic church has been ‘educating’ people all over the Western world since before the idea of getting everyone to read and write even existed. It has a whole system in place therefore to immediately corner the market on the American educational system that is going to be up for grabs with vouchers, with all of the corresponding ramifications. Obviously, if you are say the guy who runs the Edison Project or some Protestant group with ties to our very Protestant Federal administration, the idea of those Catholics going and getting all the cash and converts is a very frightening thing. Largely because, on a level playing field, there is no way you can have set up the rules and framework and the thoroughly indoctrinated foot soldiers (the various Orders of Catholic nuns and brothers) ready to hit the ground running and gobble up the money before the Papists get their hands on it. The Catholic church is in a prime position to completely dominate the American educational system at the grade- and high school level, and so there appears to be an effort on the part of various vested interests with ties to at least the current administration to ‘unlevel’ the playing field so to speak by making all Catholic priests and other related clergy out to be a bunch of child molesters and freaks.

Which to be fair isn’t really that much of a stretch, but again the timing of the announcements of grievous indiscretions by men of the cloth is too convenient to be anything but propaganda aimed at putting the Church behind the eight-ball when the auction of our children’s minds gets underway sometime in the next 6 months to 2 years or whatever the timeline is to get the vouchers in the hands of parents and to sound the death knell on anything even resembling fair access to education in this country. I mean think about it, would you rather send your kid to some corporate/religious institution run by some arm of Focus on the Family, or to a Catholic school that has all these buggerers running the show? The Religious Right school might even cost quite a bit more, but if the Public Mind is convinced that the Catholics are all pedophiles then they will likely spend their money where they feel comfortable sending their kids.

Now, I’m not trying to set myself up here as a defender of a cruel and manipulative system of indoctrination that has scarred and hurt me on a very personal level in many, many ways. But I do think that all of these recent developments are linked in a very obvious manner, and I think that the handover of the public schools to private hands has serious repercussions down the road that could effect not only the minds of the American people but even their ability to have any kind of hope that things might even at some far off time get better. This idea is something I am still working on and when I have something more concrete I will send you some of it. In the meantime I thank you for posting your website and displaying a courage I personally would wonder if I have.

Regards,
‘John Paul’