MARASCO: A monopoly on morality

As another pope who calls for discrimination of the gay community comes to power, I can’t help but escape a question that has bothered me since adolescence — How on earth does Catholicism, Christianity as a whole, or any religion, have anything to do with morality?

Growing up in a strict Catholic environment, lack of morality is one of the fundamental objections you hear towards other worldviews. “Without Christianity, without the bible, without God, where could someone possibly get morals?” This is ridiculous. Why should any religion claim a monopoly on morality?

I was fully immersed in the strange world of Christianity from birth. I’ve sat through hundreds of lectures and sermons. I’ve prayed the rosary. I’ve eaten the wafer that’s actually flesh. I’ve given up chocolate during March. I’ve read the bible, front to back, several times. What becomes painfully apparent when talking to so many who call themselves Christians is that they haven’t actually read the bible. The bible has many beautiful verses about love, and they’ve heard those, but they don’t realize how awful a work it is when read in its entirety.

The bible calls being gay an “abomination.” It says to stone a woman to death who is not a virgin on her wedding night — and on her father’s stoop to really make it count. God orders the genocide of the Canaanites, along with the raping of their wives and murdering of their infant children. That’s pretty dark stuff.

And this myth, that somehow only the Old Testament has all the ugly bits is just plain wrong. If you want to learn about women’s inferiority to men read Corinthians. If you want to hear about torture on a lake of fire read Revelation. The climactic scene of the bible’s second act reveals that all humans are innately evil from birth and only through human torture and sacrifice can we be forgiven.

What kind of morality is any of that? Certainly not one I’d like to prescribe to. There’s always the accusation of cherry-picking — “You’re cherry-picking the bad parts.” Well, no. It’s clear to me that others are cherry-picking the good parts in a mostly grotesque piece of literature. But either way, how could we know which parts are good and which parts are bad to cherry-pick if our morality comes from this “word of God”?

It seems the answer is pretty simple — the bible, or any holy book, has nothing to do with morality. We can all look at the bible and say “Gee wiz, infanticide is a drag,” or “love your neighbor — that’s good stuff.”

Why? It’s because we can already recognize what is right and what is wrong. If someone says their morality comes from a god or a book does that mean they don’t rape, and kill only out of piety? I certainly would hope not.

We don’t need to draw our morals from Bronze Age zealots who stoned each other. Believing in a god or a particular holy book has absolutely no connection to being a moral person, and it’s insulting to all humans to imply that it does.

Frank Marasco is a senior in the College of Communications. He can be reached at fcm820@bu.edu.