FIRST DRAFT

Gender, Religion, and Other Things Nobody's Got Right

Echidne on that survey of Muslims worldwide that was making heads explode in wingerstan last week: 

If an overall conclusion appears from the report, it might be that the different areas are not identical with each other and that what seems to influence the findings is the actual history of a particular country:  If that history is one of something fairly close to Islamic theocracy, then the results tend to be more conservative.  On the other hand, if a particular country has had a more secular democracy or a period of non-Islamic laws, the results tend to be less conservative.  Thus, the European countries included in the report largely come across as more progressive, whereas the least progressive countries include the Sub-Saharan countries in Africa and the Islamic Countries of the Middle East.

Shockingly, people are not animals, and are influenced by more than one factor at once. Last week everybody was losing they damn minds about SHARIAH LAW and how many Muslims think women should be stoned to death for looking at a man the wrong way and what have you, all the stuff, as Echidne points out, worries comfortable non-Muslim America more than it does anyone else: 

When I was reading it I wondered how the included questions were determined.  Pretty much all of them are about concerns the "rest of the world" has about Islam, and most of them are "trigger" questions:  the sorts of questions we in the West often read about in the context of Islam.   But questions about, say, the education of girls or the chances of women to work outside the home or to serve as judges or to travel alone etc. were not included.

As if the one has nothing to do with the other. As if the more people educate themselves, the more we all learn, the more we don't realize we're the same. As if we haven't seen this play out over and over and over. As if we've got it all down pat by now and are just waiting for these people to catch up. 

A. 

Bigots are the New Gays

Jesus Elvis Roosevelt Christ: 

Last week, the cover of Time magazine showed two women kissing and a headline that read: "Gay Marriage Already Won." With the Supreme Court case on gay marriage at hand in Washington -- a final decision isn't expected until summer -- many feel that the legalization of marriage for gays is inevitable.

Only the Deep South states, including Tennessee, remain opposed. In 2012, 59.4 percent of Georgia residents said they wouldn't be in favor of legalizing gay marriage, according to a Landmark Communications/Rosetta Stone poll.

Yet even in Tennessee, where more people are opposed to gay marriage than any other state in the South -- 62 percent -- according to Middle Tennessee State University polling, many are reluctant to express their qualms with others.

"If you say you are not for it, [people] say you hate gays or it's a hate crime," said Meghann Parry, 20, a sophomore at UTC.

People say it's a hate crime? Really? Who exactly charged you with said hate crime? Because in recent memory laws on the books made it a crime to have certain types of sex, so if these things are exactly equivalent it's important that we be clear here.

The church has turned off way too many people with harsh words about homosexuality. A Christian should be morally opposed to homosexual acts without condemning a person, many pastors say.

"We have to be compassionate," said Gary Jared, senior pastor at Stuart Heights Baptist Church. "The misunderstanding is that if you don't agree with someone's lifestyle that you hate them or are scared of them."

Right. You should love them and not be afraid of them when you tell them you disagree with their "lifestyle." There has to be a nicer way to tell somebody they're going to hell. This is all just about your tone of voice. 

David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, said he is also finding this in the Tennessee Legislature.

"They support a view of sexual intimacy within the confines of marriage, but just like the general public from which they come, they are often intimidated and uncomfortable expressing that for fear that they will be disliked or voted out of office or called pejorative names," Fowler said.

Or murdered. Murdered, even, for "expressing" themselves. Hanged, shot, beat to death, herded into concentration camps, hounded from jobs and housing, with no legal recourse and no appeal to public sympathy. What would THAT be like? It's difficult to imagine. If only there was some group to which a comparison could be made. 

You know what pisses me off about these self-martyring drama whores? There are actual places in the world where Christians are in fact persecuted, where they're verbally and physically threatened, where they're unwelcome. That genuine persecution usually ranks lower than "people look at me funny when I talk about buttsex" on the list of stuff American Christians are concerned about. The endless confusion of "universal approval of my innermost thoughts no matter how stupid" and "tolerance" drives me up a goddamn tree. You really want Christians to be freer to express their faith? Start working in China, goddamn it. 

And if you want to oppose marriage equality and dislike the "gay lifestyle" and generally act like the 1950s called and they want you to come home, you can still in fact do that all you want. You'll just run into fewer and fewer like-minded people. It's okay, though. There will always be groups in which you'll find yourself welcome, no matter how small those groups are.

But you want to be at the cool party, and you're upset that you can't be at the cool party and still be so uncool. Well, guess what? It's time to learn to deal. You don't get to have everything. Welcome to the United States of the rest of us. 

A. 

Keep Annoying the Prigs, Holy Father

Happy Easter, stuck-up assholes: 

There were certainly none of those trappings on display Thursday at the Casal del Marmo juvenile detention facility in Rome, where the 76-year-old Francis got down on his knees to wash and kiss the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women. The rite re-enacts Jesus’ washing of the feet of his 12 apostles during the Last Supper before his crucifixion, a sign of his love and service to them.

The church’s liturgical law holds that only men can participate in the rite, given that Jesus’ apostles were all male. Priests and bishops have routinely petitioned for exemptions to include women, but the law is clear.

Francis, however, is the church’s chief lawmaker, so in theory he can do whatever he wants.

“The pope does not need anybody’s permission to make exceptions to how ecclesiastical law relates to him,” noted conservative columnist Jimmy Akin in the National Catholic Register. But Akin echoed concerns raised by canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Vatican’s high court, that Francis was setting a “questionable example” by simply ignoring the church’s own rules.

“People naturally imitate their leader. That’s the whole point behind Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. He was explicitly and intentionally setting an example for them,” he said. “Pope Francis knows that he is setting an example.”

The inclusion of women in the rite is problematic for some because it could be seen as an opening of sorts to women’s ordination. The Catholic Church restricts the priesthood to men, arguing that Jesus and his 12 apostles were male.

Francis is clearly opposed to women’s ordination. But by washing the feet of women, he jolted traditionalists who for years have been unbending in insisting that the ritual is for men only and proudly holding up as evidence documentation from the Vatican’s liturgy office saying so.

“If someone is washing the feet of any females … he is in violation of the Holy Thursday rubrics,” Peters wrote in a 2006 article that he reposted earlier this month on his blog.

In the face of the pope doing that very thing, Peters and many conservative and traditionalist commentators have found themselves trying to put the best face on a situation they clearly don’t like yet can’t do much about lest they be openly voicing dissent with the pope.

Yeah, this is gonna be fun to watch. They're supposed to be slavishly loyal to Rome, so they can't criticize the pope, even when he's not embodying the ideals of pointless adherence to documentation from the liturgy office.

I mean heavens, the rubrics. Is there anything more important than the rubrics? 

A. 

Who Will Speak Up for Christianity in an Age of Rampant Girl-on-Girl?

If only it had a champion, such as the Tribune's John Kass: 

I'm not opposed to same-sex unions. Americans have the right to equal protection under the law, and same-sex couples should be able to expect the same tax benefits and other considerations allowed to those of us who are now being called, in some quarters, "opposite-sex couples."

As far as I'm concerned, Americans have the right to do as they please as long as they don't infringe upon the rights of others. America is all about liberty and freedom.

But this all comes now during the season of Lent, a time of fasting and prayer, when Christians are compelled to confront the obligations of their faith.

And while I hear the new moral arguments, about equal rights and equal protection, I've read little about the religious freedom aspects and what the Supreme Court's ruling might mean for houses of traditional worship.

You've read LITTLE? Really? Where have you been? 

And by the by, "opposite sex" is what heterosexual couples have been called since I was a kid. The opposite sex, that isn't a pejorative, unless you make it one in order to feel put upon. 

The federal government has already told religious institutions that run hospitals that they must provide contraceptives to their employees, even if it runs counter to their beliefs. So now, if the government ultimately compels us to describe same-sex unions as marriage, what's next?

No, they've told religious institutions that run hospitals that they must provide COVERAGE for contraceptives to their employees, if they employ large numbers of employees. They don't have to hand out condoms at gunpoint and put the pill in with the W-2s every spring. 

Plus Catholic women are already on this.  Never mind the non-Catholic ones who just want to get jobs. 

As for "what's next," I think the answer is church-mandated man-on-dog. We're only a minute away from that at any time. 

To speak of faith in this context is to invite the charge of bigotry — if not outright, at least by comparison to angry fire-and-brimstone preachers who seem to use the Bible as a lash. Some wield the Old Testament like a cudgel, and avoid the New Testament, in which Christ asked us to refrain from judging and to love our neighbor.

No one with half a brain wants to be thought of as a bigot. But that's what I and others risk as members of a distinct and irritating minority — as traditional Christians in journalism.

No, being a bigot is what invites charges of bigotry. There is nothing in "traditional Christianity" as embodied by Jesus Christ that makes you a bigot. There is much in the politics of traditional Christianity and Roman Catholicism as embodied by its present leaders that makes it glacially slow to change and pathologically quick to conflate religious and secular practice in an effort to hold onto power, but that has absolutely dick to do with Jesus. So to speak. 

As to the minority status Mr. Kass is so quick to claim, nailing yourself to the cross and then bitching that your hands and feet are sore and you're thirsty is not martyrdom, it's self-indulgence. Nobody is going to fire you because you go to church on Sunday or wear a cross. 

Being incoherent and maudlin, on the other hand, should be a dismissable offense: 

It is a world of language and political symbolism, a world where ideas are often framed so that they may lead to inexorable conclusions favored by the dominant culture. In this media world, I sometimes wonder whether the word "sin" has been outlawed by the high priests of journalism for fear of offending one group or another.

So you really WANT to write a column calling all gays sinners, but you're afraid for your job? What? What does this even mean? 

As to the great risk you're running here, Mr. Kass, I'd note you're writing this in a major metropolitan newspaper. You're not exactly preaching in the desert, to the stones. 

Now that the debate has been framed, if I hold to my faith and resist applauding the changes, I'm easily cast as some drooling white cartoon bigot of the Jim Crow era, denying black Americans the right to sit at a lunch counter and have a meal with the white folks.

You know, you can't claim to be the voice speaking up for the unpopular view, and then lament that it is so unpopular and makes you a target for negative attention. I mean, you can, but the rest of us find it exhausting. 

What is also clear is that, given demographic shifts and attitudes, particularly by young people regarding sexuality and family, traditional Christianity is no longer the dominant culture.

It is the counterculture, fast becoming a minority view.

No, opposition to marriage equality is fast becoming a minority view. Christianity is in no danger whatsoever. Mistaking the one for the other is the central problem with this piece. 

And while I struggle with the fast-moving issue of the redefinition of marriage and its effect on our culture and how to reconcile the rights of others and my own religious beliefs, I ask only one thing:

Tolerance.

Remember that word? Tolerance?

Tolerance for those whose faith and traditional beliefs put them in what is fast becoming the minority.

Absolutely no one is breaking down your door demanding you marry another dude. You can go to church without fear of ever having to see two women plighting their troth before the altar. This changes nothing for you, except that you have to deal with losing privilege and impunity to say whatever you please without fear of disagreement.  

That isn't being a "minority." It isn't being persecuted. You long for bastions of traditionalism; well, you have those in your churches. You can go there and feel the comfort you need. And when you say, over and over, that you support gay people having the same rights as everybody else but you are just afraid this will start some kind of pogrom against Christians ... I mean, remember the way the cities of Iowa were in flames for months after the first gay wedding? People were eating their household parakeets to stay alive. It was monstrous. 

Pray, I ask you all, for peace in the Middle West. 

Snark aside, somewhere in this mess is a good column, about the inability of many to articulate the fear of change that strikes us all at one point or another, and how that fear of change can prevent us from being the people we know we should be. I think what Kass is really asking for is not tolerance, but patience. 

Patience with the struggle of people to understand their own faith (and their own religion, and the diferences between the two), to reconcile their childhoold lessons with the consciences God gave them, to grow and change and love each other not just in words and hugs at Christmastime but in actions and rights and responsibilities. 

And if he'd asked for patience, for time to adjust, I'd still respond, and direct him to a fierce and unapologetic proponent of Christianity for some words upon the subject: 

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

There is, you see, a tradition here as well. 

A. 

Update: Whet has more on the utter allergy to facts going on here.

Malaka Of The Week: Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier

Wilfrid Fox Napier sounds like he should be a Tory MP, a rural Anglican vicar or a nob tormented by Hyacinth Bucket. Instead, he's the Archbishop of Durban in South African. He's also a slam dunk choice as an early malaka of the week "winner." The Cardinal put his slippered foot in his mouth and told the world that "pedophilia is not a criminal condition, it's an illness." The most depressing part of this malakatude is that the Cardinal is typical of the Catholic hiearchy's views on this matter.

Cardinal WFN (or do y'all prefer WiFoNap?) has already issued a series of non-apology apology tweets that are laced with weasel words:

"It's the supreme irony. Because I raised the issue of the abused abuser, I stand accused of insensitivity to the sufferings of the abused.

"My concern: How can society deal justly, fairly & equitably with the abused, who has suffered incalculable damage, then goes on to abuse?

"Do the Church & society not have to consider the damage he suffered when deciding what to do? Or does the abused abuser lose all his rights?

"My response: Such abuser should receive treatment to make good the damage done to him? In prison or out of it, that's for experts to decide.

"I believe as every dictionary consulted confirms Paedophilia is a medical condition. What is a crime is the sexual abuse of children.

"Therefore Paedophilia must be treated. What must be punished is the Crime of Sexual Abuse of Children.

If the Church had not spent decades hiding pedo priests from public view and denying the problem, the Cardinal's position could be *theoretically* defensible. But after all the Lowes and Mahonys, the cult of the red beanie is totally discredited on this issue. Cardinal WiFoNap should bite his ecclesiastical tongue and STFU. He sounds like just another cleric who thinks that Priests are superior to the rest of us mere mortals albeit one who's all modern and shit because he's on the tweeter tube.

I realize that Cardinals are in the forgiveness business BUT equating priest "abused/abusers" with their victims is arrogant rubbish. I thought humility was in vogue with the ascension of Francis to the papacy? I guess Cardinal WiFoNap didn't get the talking points or something. Check your in-box next time, dude.

Paragraph of the day

I am occasionally asked why I call the Guardian the best newpaper in the English speaking world. It's a writer's paper and it always has been. They do great and fearless reporting BUT the editors give pundits and reporters alike a lot of freedom to be both funny *and* insightful. Here's the great Simon Hoggart writing about the new pope:

We used to say de mortuis nil nisi bonum (don't speak ill of the dead), but that's all changed with warts-and-all obituaries. Now we are incredibly nice instead about people who've just been promoted. Take the new pope. He seems to be an astonishing man of parts. Questions have been raised about his relationship with the vile Argentinian junta, but at the same time he is a plain-living revolutionary, having come from outside the Vatican curia, bringing a breath of modest fresh air from the new world. Yet nothing will change. He is against contraception, abortion, divorce, gay marriage and female priests. It's as if Lenin arrived at the Finland station in St Petersburg, announcing, "Comrades, I bring thrilling news! Things are going to carry on much as before!"

A Simpler Papacy

Once again, we call these things inevitabilities when they're really choices: 

Not for Francis the red leather shoes favored by Benedict. Indeed, the Catholic newspaper Avvenire reported that a priest at the cathedral in Buenos Aires banded together with some friends to buy a pair of new shoes for Bergoglio before the archbishop left for the papal election conclave in Rome because his footwear looked so embarrassingly tattered.

On Friday, after an audience with senior prelates, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles tweeted, "At our meeting today with Pope Francis, I noted that [he] is still wearing his older black shoes. I pray that he keeps them as a sign for us all."

But even as the head of what is essentially Europe's last absolute monarchy, Francis is already discovering that his power, and his insistence on humble practice, has limits.

On his visit Thursday morning to the St. Mary Major basilica in downtown Rome to pray, he rode in a modest Vatican car with only a small security detail, eschewing the papal Mercedes (license plate SCV 1, abbreviating the Italian and Latin names for Vatican City) and a police escort. When the guards in charge of his safety moved to close off the basilica to the public, the pope asked that it be kept open.

Nothing doing.

"The gendarmes of the Vatican said no," said an employee at the church who declined to give his name. "The pope wanted it open, but the wish of the pope was not obeyed."

Such precautions are understandable; one of Francis' predecessors, John Paul II, was wounded by an assailant's bullet in 1981. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, suggested that there could be some flexibility in Francis' security arrangements, since the guards "are at the service of the pope and will have to adapt themselves to the pastoral style that the pope will use."

Security is likely to be tight on the pontiff's foreign trips, where the man who used to ride the bus around Buenos Aires is likely to be chagrined to see traffic blocked for his sake. In addition to head of the Roman Catholic Church, the pope will have to adjust to being a head of state who will be treated as such.

Actually no, he won't. He's the pope. People will have to adjust to treating him how he wants to be treated. That's like the only perk of the position. This seems to me to be one of those jobs where there actually are no checks on your power. If I become pope tomorrow and make Battlestar Galactica required viewing for all U.S. Catholics, and replace the entire vestment thing with UW hockey hoodies, then welcome to the new order. So say we all, and hit 'em again.

Benedict, as someone in this story points out, wanted fancy clothes and ceremony because he saw it as a way of communicating the power of the church. That's understandable, inasmuch as it sent the message he wanted to send. If Francis, then, wants to send the message that priests are servants instead of princes, and he wants to do that via paying his own hotel bill and driving himself around and meeting with people in the open, the gendarmes best step back lest they find themselves out of a job. Pope wants to hit the drive through McDonalds instead of having something catered in, you go get him a god-blessed Big Mac already. 

There's this sense in the story and I've heard it from others that this is some kind of bad sign, that the cardinals will all be pissed off this and Catholics won't respect the papacy as much without the giant hat that comes with it. And once upon a time when people were used to seeing only kings and princes in opulent palaces, that might have been the case. An insurgent, immigrant, powerless church might have needed those ways to communicate its power. 

But now? Humility is the surprise, the aberration, the outlier. That could bring the church more attention than any new pair of shoes could. 

A. 

The New Pope On Same Sex Marriage

While I'm not surprised that Pope Francis is against marriage equality, I didn't expect him to need a distemper shot on the subject:

Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement, the gay rights activist who was the first to legally marry his partner in Latin America sent out a jubilant tweet. Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio "cannot be pope," wrote Alex Freyre, because "he lost his papabile status the instant I married @josedibellow. Same for any other Argentine priest."

On Wednesday, Freyre was proven wrong. When the cardinals elected Bergoglio pope, they made history in two ways: They chose the first Latin American pope, but they also chose the first pope from a country where same-sex marriage became legal on his watch.

Although his focus has often been on social justice issues, Bergoglio is a strong defender of the church's position on the marriage issue. His militancy in the campaign against Argentina's "Equal Marriage Law" in 2010 was so tone-deaf that many observers credit him with helping the law pass. But the mistakes his church made in combatting the law—and the tack it has taken since—may suggest the new Pope Francis will be savvier about guiding the church in opposing marriage in countries headed in that direction.

Bergoglio was Argentina's top bishop during the fight over the marriage law. One of the major turning points in the debate came when a letter he'd written to a group of nuns explaining opposition to the law was made public. The rhetoric seemed so out of touch with Argentina's largely secular population that it marginalized the church even further in the debate.

The law was "sent by the Devil," Bergoglio wrote in July of 2010:

Let's not be naive: This is not a simple political fight; it is a destructive proposal to God's plan. This is not a mere legislative proposal (that's just it's form), but a move by the father of lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God… Let's look to St. Joseph, Mary, and the Child to ask fervently that they defend the Argentine family in this moment… May they support, defend, and accompany us in this war of God."

Yikes. I wonder if Bergoglio confused Argentine President Cristina Kirchner with Flip Wilson's Geraldine character:

I should close with our ritual gay marriage shout-out: Fuck yeah, Argentina.

White Smoke Gets In My Eyes

My advances have been scorned by the Cult of the Red Beanie in favor of a 76 year old Jesuit from Argentina. It looks like the powers that be have the caretaker pontiff of their dreams. There's no cure for the curia, after all.  Charlie Pierce sees this as an extension of the papacies of John Paul and Eggs Benedict:

OK, so he's the first pope from Latin America, and the first Francis, which ties him with Hilarius and a few dozen others for last place in the papal names rankings. He's also a member of The Society — A Jesuit pope, the first one, which means Dan Brown gets five more novels. (Strangely enough, the Jesuits, in their Fourth Vow, take a special vow of obedience to...wait for it...the pope. This is going to make for an interesting internal monologue for the new fella, I'm thinking.) Most important, he's 76-years old which means, quite honestly, that the man's a caretaker, or that there is a real faction within the cardinal-electors arrayed against the idea of very long papacies on the order of that of John Paul II. The last pope, in a conclave that was a bigger fix than the 1919 World Series, was the obvious choice, but he also was 78 upon his election, and he reigned only five years. It's hard to imagine Francis I going much longer than that. It's also hard to imagine that this wasn't some kind of plan all along.

I shoulda known that whole pro-gay marriage thing would kill my candidacy. I do, however, like the name Francis. It brings to mind my favorite mule as well as one of my favorite singers but since I couldn't find a version online of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Francis Albert, we'll make do with the divine Sarah Vaughan:

 

You Don't Get To Talk In Church

Pray the non-gay-hating politicians away: 

Among those to decry the state's pending marriage equality legislation, which is currently awaiting a House vote, was Bishop Lance Davis, senior pastor at a church in Dolton.

“We want to make sure that we a send a message to our elected officials that as a collective community and a collaborative, we will not allow you to speak in our churches, you will not be invited to our church when you’re running for office because we as a community are incensed," he is quoted by the radio station as saying.

Wow, how awful for them. They won't get to come stand next to a bigot and beg for votes from anybody who isn't turned off by your bigotry. Sad day for them. 

After this, I wouldn't vote for anyone who DID speak at your church. There are other votes out there to be had, from people who care about trivial silly things like feeding poor people and making sure schools don't have holes in the roofs. You know, CHRISTIANS. 

A. 

On The Road With Cardinal Scola

It's conclave Tuesday, y'all. The gathering of what Charlie Pierce loves to call the "cult of the red beanie." I have no red-hatted dog in this fight but I've gotten a kick out some of the pre-conclave spin. My favorite was this item about Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milano:

To illustrate that life is a journey, one of the Italian cardinals touted as a favorite to be the next pope doesn't just turn to the Scriptures – but also to Jack Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy.

Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, is seen as Italy's best chance at reclaiming the papacy, following back-to-back popes from outside the country that had a lock on the job for centuries.

<snip>

Quoting from Kerouac's iconic Beat Generation novel `'On the Road," Scola invited his audience of students to reflect on whether they `'were going to get somewhere, or just going." And he cited McCarthy's post-apocalyptic father-son journey in `'The Road," urging youths to consider the meaning of "destination" – a key theme in McCarthy's work.

`'The destination is a happy life, an accomplished life that doesn't end with death but with eternal life," the archbishop said.

Jack Kerouac? Crazy, daddy-o. The Cardinal actually quoted a notorious bi-sexual alcoholic drug user. Awesome. Does this make him a closet liberal? Unlikely. Perhaps he'll quote Ginsburg or Ferlinghetti next, which inspires me to suggest a possible name: Pope Beatnik I. The hipsters will love it and it shouldn't scare too many old ladies or altar boys. The latter, alas, are always scared and the former mostly admire the Cardinals for their red frocked finery.

I'll let Ian Anderson, of all people, have the last word, with this ode to the Beat Generation:

 

I Have An Active Heterosexual Lifestyle, Right?

For God's sake, if you mean "fucking," just say "fucking:" 

University of Portland is a Catholic institution that allowed students to form an official Gay-Straight Partnership in 2008, but not everyone was happy with the decision. As conservative site LifeNews wrote at the time:

Although the Gay Straight Partnership has made pains to state that it will be adhering to Catholic teaching on sexuality, experience has shown pro-family advocates that such alliances typically result in the push to normalize and to affirm as morally acceptable an active homosexual lifestyle amongst university students.

That’s exactly what the students campaigning today want: A campus where all students feel safe and supported, regardless of their sexuality. 

Which, naturally, is interpreted as "everyone must have gay sex all the time." An "active homosexual lifestyle?" I guess that means anything other than pretending to be aggro-straight while secretly spanking it to nude photos of Lorne Greene? I don't know what it means.  

Being actively heterosexual seems to mean arguing with Mr. A about whose turn it is to clean the litterbox and do the laundry. Is that what Catholic universities are so scared of? Homosexuals taking turns cooking dinner for each other?  

This idiocy comes amid a great story about how the kids are all right, even if the administrators at Catholic universities have their heads firmly up their asses: 

University of Portland President Bill Beauchamp told the student newspaper that the school had already made a gesture toward LGBT students and faculty by adopting a “statement of inclusion” in 2011 which committed the school to not discriminate based on sexual orientation. But, he said, if the school adds sexual orientation to its official non-discrimination policy, it could mean the university condones sexual practices not accepted by the Catholic Church.

Yes. You are either in favor of discrimination, or boy-on-boy rimjobs on the altar during Easter Mass. There is NO MIDDLE GROUND. If you de-legalize harrassment and bullying, make it grounds for firing someone, it will be nothing but same-sex handies from here to the football field. Because gay kids were waiting for this before they got it on. God, I hope not. Life is short, kids. Be safe, but Jesus, life is short. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. 

What Catholic universities are really afraid of is putting anything in writing that could allow the Holy See to bring the hammer down on their asses for being insufficiently theologically obtuse. Which, if they'd just say that, instead of this mealy-mouthed nonsense about approving of something called an active lifestyle, I think we could all get on the same page and direct our attention where it needs to be, on the collection of fusty old fossils in Rome who want a leave-it-to-Beaver trip back to the 1550s while Kids Today would just as soon get on with their lives. 

I'm sorry, their "lifestyles." 

A. 

Oh Bite My Rosy Red Ass, Mahony

For serious: 

Mahony, who has been criticized for moving predator priests from posting to posting, told Corriere della Sera that "after 20 years, people are talking about abuse as if we had not done anything. However, since 2002, we have had our program Protecting the Children, in which we illustrate procedures and the guidelines of our zero-tolerance policy that allows no possibility, for example, of anyone found guilty of abuse of minors working for the diocese."

Well, since 2002! That's like 11 whole years of not protecting molesters, hiding them from cops, and inflicting them on unsuspecting and vulnerable children and families while blaming those families for the abuse they suffered! AMAZING.You're just like a saintly, wonderful person, just like ... wait, hold on, it'll come to me ... JUST LIKE JESUS.

And what would Jesus have done? Convened a panel, certainly. All these guys do is blither around about how they handled abuse the way they thought they were supposed to handle it, and blah blah blah the psychological literature: 

"Anyone who looks at the psychiatric and psychological literature then will see that I applied the professional approach suggested for all institutions. We tried to follow the best practices of the period."

Well, as long as you did what it said to do in the BOOK. I mean, how can anyone blame you for that? 

Mahony said he subsequently set about building a network of safeguards against abuse, including the hiring in 1994 of a retired judge to head a Sexual Abuse Advisory Board for the Los Angelees archdiocese.

"My rather painful mistake was to not apply the work of that committee to previous cases. I was more focused on new cases. However, that was an error I completely rectified in 2002," Mahony said.

THE POINT IS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TELL THE FUCKING COPS. God. 

Your internal policies and procedures and whatnot have NOTHING TO DO with anything, that is the point that is so hard to get across to these guys. Canon law is not civil law and never will be, and quite frankly shouldn't be. You hear of somebody raping a kid, you tell the goddamn police. You don't conduct your own investigation first, you don't hire your own Church Cops and Church Judges and hold a Church Trial and throw the guy in Church Jail.

These people weren't breaking church law. It's not like they're banging consenting chicks and you need to fire them for it. They're breaking AMERICAN law, and they needed to face American legal consequences. 

A. 

598 Years

Oops, got it wrong the first time. That's what happens when you take a blogcation:

That's how long it's been since a pope abidcated and it's been 968 years since a pope named Benedict quit. My stat-head friends are apt to appreciate the numerical symmetry.

Here's *why* Benny the 9th resigned:

Pope Benedict IX, in 1045: At age 33 and about 10 years into his tumultuous term, the Rome-born pope resigned so that he could get married – and to collect some cash from his godfather, also Roman, who paid Benedict IX to step down so that he might replace him, according to British historian Reginald L. Poole’s definitive and much-cited history of the 11th century.

Okay, back to Lundi Gras related stuff and answering the age old question, to costume or not to costume. I lean towards the latter since it may be wet tomorrow.

That is all.

Does He See the RICO Case Coming?

I mean, it's basically Boardwalk Empire up in there anyway: 

The abuse scandals dominated his seven years as leader of the world's Catholics. Before his accession, there had been scandals in the United States and Ireland. But in 2010, evidence of clerical sex abuse was made public in a succession of countries in continental Europe, notably Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Benedict's native Germany.

The pope was himself affected by one of these scandals. It emerged that, while he was archbishop of Munich, a known molester was quietly re-assigned to duties that, in time, allowed him to return to pastoral duties and make contact with young people.

The flood of allegations represented a vast setback for the project at the heart of Benedict's papacy. The goal he had set for himself, and for which he was elected, was to launch the re-evangelisation of Europe,Catholicism's heartland: it was why he adopted as his papal name that of the continent's patron saint, Benedict of Nursia. But if the numbers of the faithful in Europe as Benedict leaves officeare fewer than when he was elected, then – surveys repeatedly indicated - it is in large part because of anger and despair in the Catholic laity over the sex abuse scandals.

When the abuse story broke in Boston -- and Boston was the first place to really connect it to the bishops' power rather than individual priests' horrifying crimes -- I said to someone at the time that this was the end of the Catholic Church in this country. 

I didn't think, even then, that it would be the end of the Catholic Church everywhere. But they managed to fuck this up in every way it could be fucked up, and then be assholes about being called on it, over and over and over. You might survive with total transparency, a full house-cleaning, and a true lack of whining, but that wasn't in these guys' DNA. 

And by the by, these are not "scandals." A scandal is where a senator gets caught with a hooker. These are "criminal conspiracy to conceal child rape." Somehow, not as fun. 

A. 

If Jesus Says He Loves You, Check It Out: Manti Te'o, Faith, and Journalism

From Deadspin's continuing coverage of the Manti Te'o sitch, something that actually interests me about it:

suitwearer 5 days ago Colin Cowherd (or however the fuck he spells it) this morning said that the fact Te'o is "a man of faith" means it was reasonable for the press to not pursue this story, despite the inconsistencies. What does that mean and why does it make me so annoyed?

Drew Magary @suitwearer 5 days ago Because he's a fucking moron. The idea that having an open faith makes you a more reliable person is stupid. And with Cowherd still employed, it's proof that you aren't gonna see much change in how sports or covered. The media isn't gonna stop offering you this sentimental dogshit. They'll just steamroll through and keep offering the same terrible product they always do.

I don't know who first figured out that muttering AS JESUS SAYS after every piece of stupid shit that pops out of your mouth made people afraid to question you, but I'd like to buy that public relations genius a beer and ask just how he came up with the idea.

(It probably was one of the disciples. Probably Paul. Paul was a dick.)

We give a ridiculously wide berth to "people of faith" already. We let them define faith however, which is why assbuckets like Bill Donohue can act like God's Perpetually Snippy Receptionist and dole out who gets what paperclips from the drawer that day, because there's no law saying he's not a Catholic just because he's a gigantic douche. We place no requirements on anyone "of faith" to demonstrate that faith whatsoever, absenting Democrats who happen not to want the state to regulate childbearing. All you have to do to be a "person of faith" is say that you are. Maybe put a plaque of some kind up during your interview.

It's not like you have to show a diploma, after all. I got ordained on the Internet a few years ago and married some friends of mine (best idea ever, by the way, if anyone asks you DO IT) so technically I could set up shop in a storefront and start holding services. Technically I could do that anyway, provided I met zoning restrictions and whatnot. We let people do that, in America, be whoever they say they are. In most religions, the process of becoming a member is pretty loose. Hell, the process of becoming a LEADER is pretty loose. Again, Bill Donohue.

Part of that agreement to live and let live, though, should be not allowing people to use their professed faith as a bludgeon. If we are all who we say we are, then we all meet on equal ground. You don't get a pass because you wave a crucifix around, and I don't get a pass because I face east at dawn. We all should be required to live up to the same standards of truthfulness, generally non-assholish behavior, and character in action. We should all be subject to the same stringent examinations of our histories and stories. We shouldn't be able to just sing some hymns and make all that inconvenient scrutiny go away.

As a "person of faith" (the First Church of Athenae is just be scotch and Galactica re-runs, so consider yourselves all converted) I'm insulted by the idea that because I can quote chapter and verse, I somehow have LESS work to do to prove myself in the world. I should have MORE. I shouldn't be able to say, well, Jesus gives me strength (Jesus has been bugging me lately about coming over "just to talk," for those tracking our soap opera) and everything you were about to ask about why I was a bitch to you that time flies right out of your head. That's ridiculous. I am just as accountable for my actions as any atheist, as any agnostic, as anyone of any "faith" and I resent the concept that I should be treated delicately.

So the idea that it was "reasonable" for reporters not to question Te'o's story (I think maybe they should refrain from covering these guys like the E True Hollywood Story every damn year but that's me and I have no love for college football) because Te'o was religious is insane. If faith gives us all so much strength, then bring it on, fuckers. Ask the toughest questions. Pick over every detail. God's here for me.

I think people didn't question the Te'o story because it was an easy, pre-set narrative that sounded good and we're all on deadline. Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by laziness and stupidity. But the idea that people of faith are inherently trustworthy is a lazy, stupid narrative too, and it's past time we threw it out and started approaching every story from the same standard of skepticism, no matter what god a football player worships.

A.

Come Inside

I watch this every year, because I've always loved this story: 

This time of year, I've written before, is about grace from unlikely beginnings and light in dark times. The older I get, the less interested I am in the war on Christmas, the war over Christmas, the endless back and forth. It's exhausting, and it isn't the point. I've never understood why science is a threat to belief, why the earth has to be a certain age, why it matters that Jesus was born in summer, how long it really took the wise men to reach him. I've never understood why what we learn about the world has to destroy the stories that make us want to live in it. I've never understood why we're at war at all. 

Even if they're only stories, the tales we hear this time of year, there are worse things than stories, especially stories that remind us what a radical act it is to trust that the world will swing toward light again. We never think it will, even though it always has. We have terribly short memories, so hope is always a radical act. We are always more than we think we are, and making the particulars of what we call that — God, our innate human beauty, nothing at all — into a bludgeon is the blasphemy, when the best weapon anyone ever had in darkness was a torch. 

If I have a doctrine at all at this point and I'm not sure I do, it's this: Come inside. Everyone come inside. It's cold and dark out and there's a fire here, and the only story worth anything is the one we'll tell tomorrow about what we did today. Come inside. Even if you're poor, or you're sick, or you're angry, or you're lost. Even if you're not sure what you are yet. Even if you don't think you'll ever know. Come inside. 

Even if all this is, is a manger, even if there's only straw on the floor and the only stars that drape the door are the ones in the sky, come inside. 

A. 

Puny God

I've spent approximately six minutes on Facebook in the last 72 hours. Treacly remembrances of things make me crazy, appropriation of other people's pain to make oneself feel important makes me crazier, and in the history of everything there has never been an intelligent discussion of anything on Facebook. It's the butthole of the Internet. I like mine because I like memes and pictures of my friends, but Christ almighty, sometimes I want to set two thirds of it on fire. 

In those six minutes I managed to see this about nine times:

Forget arguing the actual point, because there isn't one beyond modern Christianity's eager self-martyrdom reality show. Let's talk about this:

SOMEBODY CAN KEEP YOUR GOD OUT OF SOMEPLACE HE WANTS TO BE?

Really? Your God listens to the Supreme Court? People ON the Supreme Court don't listen to the Supreme Court, but your God obeys them? Your God takes orders from the Freedom From Religion Foundation? Your God listens to that dick who has to inject his lack of belief into every conversation about everything from recipes to road head? Your God is cowed by that? Even other atheists think Richard Dawkins is an asshole, but your God takes one look at an op-ed of his and turns tail and runs?

What kind of pathetic weak-ass God do you worship, anyway? A God who needs national approval to show up in the schoolyard and help out kids who are being bullied and beaten and stabbed and shot? A God who needs an official memo complete with TPS report cover to get His job done that day? A God who respects a lock on the door, a bar on the window, a sign that says go away?

Have you ever read the Scriptures you claim to revere?

That God drew water from the rock, parted the seas, raised the dead from their graves, smashed the cruel and corrupt. That God swept down over the earth and uprooted tyrants, freed slaves, inspired nations, lifted up the widow and the orphan, all before His daily Chipotle run. That God was here for the ones who wanted Him, sure, but He was there for everybody else, too, and certainly wasn't waiting for an engraved invitation to get shit done. His Son declared that He had sheep not of this flock, and that no one, no one at all, would go to the Father except through Him, that He was there for everyone. He didn't ignore the people who rejected Him, wag His finger and cluck that He told them so and they'd be sorry.

He forgave them their rejection and welcomed them to His cosmic party no matter how late they came or how lousy their hostess gifts were. That was the WHOLE FECKING IDEA.

That's the God worthy of worship, not this petulant bastard who whines that He didn't even WANT to be in your stupid school anyway, and if a bunch of kids get shot then GOOD because it proves His point. I don't know who'd want to worship that jackass. I wouldn't sit next to Him on the subway, much less build Him a temple and name Him my king.

A.

Willard's LDS Rant

I've long said that Romney only believes in himself and the Mormon Church. Here's proof from 2007 that he's semi-human:

 

 

Waves of empathy

I don't usually go in for even a semi-poetic tone but the images of NYC and Atlantic City have got me thinking about our little thing here in NOLA 7 years ago. 7 years? It was really another lifetime but whenever there's a big disaster-especially in a place I've spent time in like Manhattan-my stomach gets knotted and my expression gets grim.

There's always an adrenaline rush before and during a massive system like Sandy. The next day comes the hangover, when the scope and extent of the damage is clear. This is a particularly strange event since it started as a tropical system and then morphed into a blizzardy, wintery mess. I don't envy folks who are digging out from this system having to deal with cold weather. Sarcasm alert: Climate change obviously does not exist.

There seems to be an immutable rule that the worst parts of a storm system come in after sunset in order to be even scarier. Another immutable rule is that some teevee journos will do and say stupid things. Southern Beale has a few scathing words about that over at her joint.

Speaking of stupid things said on teevee. It is *not* better to lose power when it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk than when it's cold. It's just different. As someone who lost power for 5 days after Isaac, I know that from personal experience. Either sucks the big one and there's not a whole helluva lot you can do about it but be patient until you're not.

Athenae has posted a bit about the politics of the Frankenstorm but I'll chime in too. I usually cannot stand Joisey Governor Chris (STFU, I'm the Gov) Christie but he has called Obama's response thus far "outstanding."

Thanks, Governor; good way of hedging your bets and looking towards 2016 if Willard goes down. Of course, it helps when the Prez appoints the most qualified person in the country, Craig Fugate, as FEMA director. One final thing about Christie: lose the shirt with Chris Christie, Governor stitched on it. It looks like a maternal camp name tag or something. You don't wanna look like Edward Norton in Moonrise Kingdom, after all.

Willard is already circling around how to pretend he hasn't called for FEMA's functions to be returned to the states or, better still, in his view, to a private company. Bad idea. We saw enough FEMA crony capitalism in post-Katrina New Orleans to last a life time.

I assume that Mittbot's plan is to lie, deny and later vilify his way out of the corner he painted himself into. It's what he does. At the risk of sounding like a religious bigot, it's classic male LDS behavior. When Joseph Smith got caught with his pantaloons down, he had a revelation from God that plural marriage rocked. In the 1970's when the Mormon church was under fire for its racist policies, then President Spencer Kimball had a revelation from God that they should change that. It's a form of self-righteous denial that has served Willard well. It's the main reason why he seems to *believe* his whoppers. Politico just believes them because they're biased and want the drama of a close election. There's enough drama without that right now, y'all.

Enough nattering from me for now. I hope all my Northeast peeps are high and dry. Just gird yourself for a long, slow process and be thankful that the infra-structure in Joisey and Noo Yawk is better than that in NOLA. I somehow doubt that we'll be able to comply with Springsteen's request to "meet me tonight in Atlantic City." 

  

Intrinsic Evil

Illinois bishop Thomas Paprocki, formerly an auxiliary bishop of Chicago and generally somebody I would not have expected to be this obtuse: 

There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils. My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding "political" and didn't say anything about the morality of these issues. People of faith object to these platform positions that promote serious sins. I know that the Democratic Party's official "unequivocal" support for abortion is deeply troubling to pro-life Democrats.

So what about the Republicans? I have read the Republican Party Platform and there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious sin. The Republican Party Platform does say that courts "should have the option of imposing the death penalty in capital murder cases." But the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (in paragraph 2267), "Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm — without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

One might argue for different methods in the platform to address the needs of the poor, to feed the hungry and to solve the challenges of immigration, but these are prudential judgments about the most effective means of achieving morally desirable ends, not intrinsic evils.

Certainly there are "pro-choice" Republicans who support abortion rights and "Log Cabin Republicans" who promote same-sex marriage, and they are equally as wrong as their Democratic counterparts. But these positions do not have the official support of their party.

Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against, but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.

None of this is new, of course, and part of what's got my back up here is just the passive-aggressiveness of it, as if Paprocki is God's Perpetually Angry Receptionist, saying he's not ACCUSING you of taking all the paper clips out of His drawer, but maybe you should think VERY CAREFULLY about what kind of employee you want to be. For your own sake. And clean out the damn fridge already; it smells like something died in there. 

US Catholic magazine, which is really warming my black little heart with its borderline-blasphemy these days, fixates on the tax exemption issue that always pops up when some purported servant of God shoots off his mouth: 

So, I could be jeopardizing my salvation if I vote for a candidate who supports the Democratic platform (but not if I vote GOP), regardless of what a particular official actually does when elected. This is sketchy moral logic to say the least, but my real question is: Does it constitute an endorsement, which would jeopardize the Springfield diocese's tax-exempt status? Paprocki writes that he feels duty-bound to speak, even if he sounds "political," but wouldn't be easier just to abandon tax exemption and jump into poliics with both feet?

But I'd like to talk about Paprocki's seemingly endless fixation on words, because that's where his argument falls down.

He spends the first few grafs of this piece boring on about the word God being in or out of the document, and then segues into this comparison of what is written in both parties' platforms. Nowhere does he talk about what each party practices. He makes a deliberate equivalence between Democrats' support for abortion rights (or, putting it in terms a pro-life Catholic Democrat might, their opposition to empowering the state to force a woman to bear a child against her will) and Republicans' support for the death penalty. Both are things that might make voting for either party morally objecitonable. 

Then he goes on to be all EXCEPT NOT REALLY on the death penalty, ignoring the fact that in practice, Republicans are far more eager to impose the death penalty upon the unwilling than Democrats are to impose abortion. 

In practice is where his argument falls apart. What happens when a particular party's will is imposed? Forget what a man says; what does he DO? What consequences do his actions produce? What aim does he have in pursuing his goals? What kind of world does he want? If we follow him, what kind of world do we get? Paul Ryan spells it out pretty clearly. Mitt Romney isn't making much of a mystery these days of what he really thinks of everybody. Paprocki's focus is on the words. On the rules. On the platforms and what they say. On the lines of code in the box and not what that code looks like spun out to its logical end. 

Time was, a decent fellow and fair to middling carpenter set out on the road to tell people that the rules don't matter if people don't matter. If the system of laws and words doesn't serve people, then you burn that whole thing down. Results are what matters. Not what the code in the box says, what it looks like when spun out to its logical end. 

Yet here's Paprocki back again, saying we should prize a platform that does not promote "intrinsic evil" over a party that, more often that not, lately, produces it in spades. 

A. 

Two Years' Probation

It's lucky His Grace wasn't a 20-year-old black man with a crack rock in his pocket. 

A. 

Avoidance

So some members of a Baptist church came to the pastor and said, we heard you're marrying some black folks in here and we're not okay with that. 

All due respect, my children, the pastor replied, that you are freaked out by non-white peoples is not Jesus's major problem at the moment. Nor is it mine. I am sorry, but you are going to have to suck it up and just ... I don't know, not come to the wedding? Were you even invited? Then what the heck do you care? Go home, watch Storage Wars and smoke marijuana like normal people do on Saturdays. 

Except not: 

Insiders say five or six members went to the Rev. Stan Weatherford after seeing the couple's wedding rehearsal the Thursday night before their Saturday wedding.

The church pastor said he was surprised by the reaction of some church members.

"I didn't want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn't want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te'Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day," Weatherford told WLBT-Channel 3.

Charles Wilson said it was a huge disappointment that he and his wife couldn't get married at the church they attended because of the color of their skin.

"I feel like it was blatant racial discrimination," Wilson said Friday.

The 150-year-old church hasn't had any black couples married there in modern times. Weatherford married the couple but moved the ceremony to a nearby church.

He didn't want to have a controversy, so he appeased the loudest, angriest people in the room, and told the couple who wanted to get married that they'd have to move so that ... I don't get exactly what they were hurting. He didn't want to have a controversy. Well, he's sure got one now, and it's well deserved.

I like the line about how it was the rehearsal that got the bigots upset, because the bride and her family had been involved with the church for a while and the groom had been attending. So a couple of black people in the congregation on Sundays was okay, but a whole bunch of 'em? Like more than three? Standing together? Clearly that's an invasion of some sort and we can't have that. 

And the comments are full of "this isn't the whole church, some of us like black people, etc" which I'm sure is also true. The defending your own Something about that, though: The five or six people who asked him to get the black couple out of sight of their white eyeballs are assholes, but there are always assholes in the world. All the bigots will not eventually die out. It will never happen. They don't win when they act like bigots, they win when nice-enough well-meaning people who are supposed to be better than this decide that in order to keep the bigots quiet, we all should pretend to agree with them. 

In which case not only is the controversy not avoided, but nobody learns anything and nobody grows one bit. You can avoid and avoid and avoid, and keep shrinking the world down so that eventually it's just a ten-by-ten room with you and your fellow racists, but that's not living, people, that's not life. In a church of all places you should be throwing the doors wide, letting in as many people as possible, especially the ones who aren't familiar to you and the ones who make you nervous and the ones you aren't sure you're gonna like.

That's the only way any of this gets better. I can sit in my house with my fellow white people and think about how I need to be less of a racist, but I'm not gonna be less of a racist unless I get out there and get to know a lot more people and start ACTING LIKE LESS OF A RACIST.  This pastor could have done quite a job by asking people who objected to the wedding to attend it, or watch the video later (admitting creepy bigoted busybodies to your wedding not being a thing many people want to do, shockingly) or really anything else up to and including telling these few people who have nothing more pressing to worry about to shut the holy hell up.

That wouldn't have avoided controversy, certainly. Last I checked, though, the head of that particular religion got himself nailed to a tree for making a scene in public about the treatment of the downtrodden. Maybe he should have just moved somewhere else. 

A. 

Witness for the Persecution

Requiring insurance plans to cover contraception is just like dissolving the Catholic Church in England so Henry VII can marry a harlot:

Making the connection to the Fortnight crystal-clear, the archbishop emphasized: “St. Thomas More could be said to represent that conscientious private employer or employee who seeks to avoid doing or facilitating moral evil in course of daily work while striving to live and work in accord with the demands of social justice. He stands for those who go about their daily work in accord with their faith . . . and those who understand how dangerous it is to the common good to separate faith from life, the Gospel from culture.”

Yes. St. Thomas More would be all OVER making non-Catholic (and Catholic, too, but we'll get to that after more quality crazy) women pay out of pocket whatever wealthy pharmaceutical companies wanted to gouge them for the privilege of not having a fifth kid in six years, or a kid out of wedlock, or LET'S NOT FORGET MEDICAL ADVANCES LIKE NOT BLEEDING TO DEATH FROM BENIGN TUMORS. St. Thomas More would be all, "Let the bitches pay $80-$100 or just die already."

Take it away, K-Lo:

We got to this point in United States history, in which religious liberty is being redefined and eroded before our eyes, in part because we haven’t been answering our call as the laity — to be authentic Christian witnesses in our daily lives. Think of what it means to be a Catholic in public life. Is it distinguishable from anyone else’s, in ways beyond rhetoric? Do we live differently? Do we vote differently? Do we have different priorities and approaches based on authentic discernment of Christ’s daily call to us?

Clearly somebody fucked up somewhere, because something like 90 percent of Catholic women use birth control in some form, and the other 10 percent are most likely nuns. Clearly what needs to happen here is all good Catholic ladies need to renounce this "modern day" and throw their pills in the trash (and make their husbands burn the Trojans, too).

Or, you know, Holy Mother Church could get Her shit together and, instead of basing policy on an archaic system of doing things that hasn't been operative since dinosaurs ruled the earth, allow people to use their God-given consciences to make the best decisions for themselves, while concentrating on boring shit like feeding poor people.

This shit makes me so crazy. The Rules are only the point if they actually help somebody. Forcing women to live as if it's 1855 and they have to have a child every time they have sex helps nobody. Forcing women to live with preventable illness and pain helps nobody. Forget the women, even, since these people seem to: Forcing women to have unwanted children doesn't help those children one bit. It doesn't help their husbands, either, really: More kids to feed and corral and send to college isn't an automatic in the win column if you have less money than, say, a Romney. Theoretically, we put The Rules in place in order to make people's lives better, and perpetuate them in order to continue that work.

This is perpetuating The Rules for the sake of The Rules, which is kind of what a very nice man got himself nailed to a tree for trying to tear down in the first place.

A.

Love Wins

Go read this. 

Not everything sucks. Sometimes it's nice to remember that. 

A. 

Way to Pick Your Battles, Catholic Church

Continuing their theme of assigning tasks based on angry wingnut e-mail forwards from America's brothers-in-law, now U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops think the Girl Scouts are leading our young astray: 

The new inquiry will be conducted by the bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. It will look into the Scouts' "possible problematic relationships with other organizations" and various "problematic" program materials, according to a letter sent by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne, Ind., to his fellow bishops.

The bishops' conference provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press, but otherwise declined comment.

[snip]

One of the long-running concerns is the Girl Scouts' membership in the 145-nation World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The association, known as WAGGGS, is on record as saying girls and young women "need an environment where they can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality." It also has called for increased access to condoms to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

Somewhere in my mother's house is the Girl Scout sash I earned with every badge on it and maybe I missed class that day but not one of them is the Condom Distribution & Promotion badge. Mostly, sitting around the campfires making s'mores, we earned badges in things like sewing and woodworking and finding our way with a compass and stuff. We did service projects and collected food for pantries. I must have missed the meeting where we got our Dildo Use for Fun and Profit instructions. 

Recently I hosted a group of Brownies at the ferret shelter, where they were earning badges in caring for animals, so they got to pet the adoptables and see how we cleaned cages and gave medications and feedings. Nobody told me I was supposed to cover how to procure a hasty abortion, and we were short on time anyway, so my bad. 

This is so stupid and small and pointless and silly. The Girl Scouts aren't even saying anything about condoms. They're "associated" with a group that is "on record" as saying something as innocuous as "condoms prevent disease and we should probably not all die of syphilis because it's no longer 1742 and also yuck."

They're not even saying "girls should be able to have whatever sex they feel they should have," which would be sensible enough. They're just saying, "girls should have an environment in which they can talk about sex without being afraid of some asshole calling them whores for asking questions about their own bodies." Even devout Catholics who intend to be virgins until marriage could still benefit from an environment in which they can talk about sex. That is, unless you're the kind of pinched, unhappy, punishing jackass who thinks even the word sex is just too dangerous for young female minds. 

That sort of person seems to rise high in the administration of the bishops. 

A. 

May The Farce Be With You

Sometimes I want to give the internet a hug:

Tommy Robinson took a few seconds on Sunday evening to make an observation about Twitter's homepage. "Welcome to twitter homepage has a picture of a mosque," he wrote. "What a joke #creepingsharia." Of course, Robinson isn't just any old tweeter, but the co-founder of the English Defence League, a far-right protest group. Tweet posted, Robinson no doubt wandered off to do other Sunday evening things; maybe plan a rally or two.

[...]

In less than 24 hours, #creepingsharia was trending, but what could have become a feed for EDL members and sympathisers to display their hard-hitting "evidence" of the rampant Islamisation of Britain, instead attracted the nimble fingers of sensible and funny tweeters, wittily but firmly telling Robinson and others of his ilk where to shove their ill-informed views.

From the mind of @microcuts_22: "I skipped breakfast this morning. Clearly fasting subconsciously. #CreepingSharia" and from @knownasbowman: "Muslamic bloke walked past on tiptoes #creepingsharia." From @LorrieHearts came: "Got rained on the other day, so pulled my scarf up over my head before realising that I'd become a victim of #creepingsharia." Each one a gentle squeeze of the hand, a tiny bit of silliness to ward off the insanity, and a quiet rebuke to the dangerous rhetoric being spouted by organisations like the EDL.

The cherry on this sundae? The image which prompted Robinson's original Tweet was not of a mosque but India's famed Taj Mahal. Woopsies.

I got a big laugh out of the #creepingsharia hashtag. Sometimes we forget that the ignorant exremists of the conservative fringe are not unique to the U.S. but are an international phenomenon. The trial of Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik is a reminder of how dangerous this hatred is: Breivik claims his victims were not innocent teenagers, no, "these were young people who worked to actively uphold multicultural values," he told the court. That was their crime, in his twisted mind.

So yes, I realize this is serious business, and I'm not trying to trivialize it. But sometimes the best offense is a liberal helping of ridicule. Applied generously and frequently, humor is the most effective antidote to fear I know. It's hard to be scared of a boogeyman when everyone is pointing and laughing at the folks hollering about "creeping sharia." Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are effective neutralizers of right-wing messaging, but we're all just as clever as those guys, right? 

And good grief, it's not like the right wing nutballs aren't giving us plenty of material, folks. Victoria Jackson's best comedy has been in her new self-appointed role as "citizen journalist." Here she is tiptoeing around the Murfreesboro, TN Islamic Center yesterday, peering in windows and looking for something -- anything -- scary. “It says take your shoes off and put them in the racks,” she reports. Oooh! Creeping Sharia indeed. Jackson was never this funny on SNL, folks.

So my challenge to everyone on the left this week is to use their creative energies for a little coordinated, well-executed mockery. Make 'em laugh -- it's better than crying.

 

What Churches Risk

In the headlong rush into sexual political fights: 

It's too bad U.S. bishops are spending so much political and cultural capital on the religious liberty fight which is now becoming bogged down over contraception. Too bad because while they are engaged in what I suspect will be a losing battle in a rhetorical war, the voice they are raising, rare these days in Washington, against a real war is getting lost in the cultural haze.

As U.S. Senators have essentially now begun taking orders directly from AIPAC and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—in a manner that would no doubt generate outrage in Israel were such frank interference attempted by the Obama administration—and as media reports continue to "soften" the American public in preparation for an "inevitable" confrontation with Iran, U.S. bishops have finally stepped into the fray raising a hand of warning.

In a March 2 letter from Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, chair of the U.S.C.C.B. Committee on International Justice and Peace, to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the bishops noted their concern over “an alarming escalation in rhetoric and tensions,” including Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic and speculation on the possible use of force against Iran, including an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

That link goes to the US Catholic magazine's blog, btw, not to some crazy hippie site. Here's another entry:

Did you know, for example, that the bishops are presenting President Obama with a petition to change our country’s policy on nuclear weapons?

The USCCB’s website currently has a petition titled “President Obama, move us closer to a world free of nuclear weapons.” Says the petition: “In the 21st century, nuclear weapons are a global security liability, not an asset. You must act now to reduce the nuclear danger and the role of nuclear weapons.”

Why isn’t this being preached from the pulpit?

Um, because wer'e too busy talking about sexy things like gay sex and birth control and who has the right to have the holy sacrament of humping where and for how many cookies? I can't fault, entirely, the bishops for the relentless focus our national media has on boning, but I can fault them for not realizing that the minute they open their celibate traps about sex that's all anybody's going to talk about. After all, it's only been like 40 years of this now.

I know Holy Mother Church thinks in millennia, and I know being media-savvy isn't exactly their strong suit, but you'd really think they would have figured this out by now. That they're acting like they haven't means they're either criminally dim or deliberately so, and either way it's bad news for anybody who'd like anything done that doesn't involve policing where people put their penises. 

When it comes right down to it the Church has made a deliberate choice that sexual intercourse is going to be the hill they want to die on. And absent some massive backlash on the part of the faithful, dying is exactly what they're going to do. 

A. 

Living for Bread Ain't Worth Living At All

RMJ on a Lent I could get into: 

You have heard; you have seen; perhaps today you even bear the ashes on your head; perhaps you didn't, or you wiped them off at the church door. It doesn't matter! What matters is what you do, and if you remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return, then you'll realize that we are all dust! And we are all deserving, we are all going down, in the end, to the same place, and it's high time we started sharing the joy of the experience rather than fearing we won't have enough accumulated for ourselves at the end! Where is your treasure? Where rust corrodes and thief steals and moth devours? Get rid of it! Your treasure is in the homeless person you can help, in the hungry person you can feed, in the naked person you can clothe! Your treasure is all around you; now put your heart there, and open the eyes of your spirit, and see it!

We've been lucky in a mild winter this year. We've been lucky in a winter that feel shorter than in years past, that feels more like an endless November than our usual endless frozen January. I have a window open today, and yesterday it was still fully light at 5, and usually I'm thinking around this time that the winter will never end and we might not survive it. This year I'm thinking maybe it's almost over, and we will. 

I said to my mother the other day, when we were talking about a project I'm working on involving the ugliness of the church, that the reason I call myself a practicing Catholic is that I"m not very good at it. It's glib but it's true, and my most frequent prayer is, "I'm trying here, Dude, cut me some slack already." It's easy to confuse ritual and repetition with the point, and I'm good at the point but not at the ritual. Some instinctive resistance to authority, maybe, or just the subsconscious desire to fuck something up so that I have something to beat myself up about? As it is, I'm not making it to church all that often, and when I am, I'm distracted. 

None of this is helped, of course, by the sad spectacle of the church attempting to smash itself on the rocks of contemporary American sexual politics, evidenced most profoundly by shit like this: 

At her mother's funeral mass at the St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Md., a grieving Barbara Johnson was the first in line to receive communion.

What happened next stunned her. The priest refused Johnson, who is gay, the sacramental bread and wine.

"He covered the bowl with the Eucharist with his hand and looked at me, and said I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman and that is a sin in the eyes of the church," Johnson told ABC News affiliate WJLA.

And this is so clearly the opposite of the point that it makes my vision go white with anger: That altar, that table, is a place of profound and radical equality. We come to that place tarnished and damaged, all of us, and all of us the same, and if there is a test in that place it's the test of those giving and not those receiving communion. We are all the Stranger in someone's eyes, all the Other. We are all the undeserving. Throw the first stone, bitches, I dare you, because we will all, someday, approach a door behind which could be welcome or condemnation and our only forlon fucking hope is that we meet with treatment we do not deserve. 

The stories in the Bible, at least the ones that speak to me most clearly, are not about daring to go inside. They're about daring to let others in, to accept the person feared, to say yes instead of no when asked a question, to help instead of walking past. That's the message that has even the barest chance of connecting with people in the world today, not this endless bludgeoning of the insufficiently devout in matters of sexual behavior and political thought. Not this cycle of punishment and purging. I hear people talk about a smaller, stronger, purer church and I think how completely opposite that is to the aim of everything I've ever been taught by the church itself.

We're supposed to try to be more, not to force others to be less. 

A. 

Party on, Pat

Pat Robertson, of all people, wants to legalize weed. Can Pope Benny be far behind?

 

Hacked Off Vatican

The Italian branch of Anonymous has put the Vatican web site in limbo or is that purgatory? In short, they've gone didatic on the papal ass. What that means beats the hell outta me but it sounds good:

In a statement on its Italian-language website, the collective accused the Catholic Church of being responsible for a long list of misdeeds throughout history, including the selling of indulgences in the 16th century and burning heretics during the Inquisition.

"Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organisation spreads around the world. This attack is not against the Christian religion or the faithful around the world but against the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church."

It also accused the Vatican of being "retrograde" in its interfering in Italian domestic affairs.

True dat. The Vatican was quite fond of Silvio Berlusconi until he insisted on walking about with his dick hanging out. Silvio shoulda zipped up both his pants and his mouth. 

Speaking of Silvio's enablers, it remains astonishing to me that men who are supposedly celibate make the sexytime rules for their flock. Most Catholics ignore them unlike a certain Presidential candidate who wears sweater vests and talks about man-dog sex. (Do you think any sweater vest clad men have had sex with a dog similarly attired? I certainly hope not.) Anyway, I don't know about you but I rarely listen to men in dresses except on Mardi Gras when I have no choice. It's the price I pay for living in New Orleans...

You know what else hacks me off about the Vatican? The fact that real life Popes are as not as entertaining as Tony Quinn in Shoes Of The Fisherman or Rex Harrison in The Agony And The Ecstasy. Rex was so awesome in that film that he made one *almost* forget the huge piece of wood that he played his scenes with. Hmm, can ham be wooden? If so, Charlton Heston is either the hammiest piece of wood or the woodiest piece of ham ever. Take your pick.

Some day I'll have to tell y'all about my fleeting encounter with Quinn in a bar in the Plaka in Athens longer ago than I care to admit. End of teaser. Here's Pope Zorba:

War on the Modern World

Go for it. Just go for it. Burn it all down. Pile everything you've ever said was important to you in the street, douse it in gasoline, and let the blaze light up the sky. 

This puts it all on the table. Republicans and Catholics and Republican Catholics and Republicans who just say they're Catholic and Catholics who are Republican because abortion seems yucky are now all just going to have to say it now. 

They would rather lots and lots of women die from preventable conditions, too many unwanted children, and abortions that should never have to happen, than that they have to put up with the thought that some woman somewhere is making her own decisions regarding who she has sex with and when. 

I got news for a lot of people what think this is some kind of winning argument about religious freedom for Catholics. Catholic women have memories of the battle over the Pill and the issuance of Humanae Vitae the first time around.

For instance, the Belgian bishops stated: "Someone, however, who is competent in the matter under consideration and capable of forming a personal and well-founded judgment--which necessarily presupposes a sufficient amount of knowledge--may, after a serious examination before God, come to other conclusions on certain points. In such a case he has the right to follow his conviction provided that he remains sincerely disposed to continue his inquiry." Of those who arrived at conclusions differ­ent from Humanae Vitae, the Scandinavian bishops stat­ed: "No one should, therefore, on account of such diverg­ing opinions alone, be regarded as an inferior Catholic." The Canadian bishops made a similar statement: ’These Catholics should not be considered, or consider them­selves, shut off from the body of the faithful."

Catholic women remember the woman in the pew next to them in church, dragging 13 children behind her, her husband dead or gone and no help at hand. They remember the neighbor who died in childbirth because her doctor was bound by faith to save her baby at all costs. They remember the relative whose husband defied the hospital's orders to make sure there were no more children, who suffered horribly before the end. They remember their own miscarriages, stillbirths, when God wanted them to have just one more baby, at the age of 45 in 1953.

And those were the married women who wanted the children they had. Those were the ones doing it right, in the eyes of the more conservative bishops and members of the church. That was the fate due the good girls. I don't need to go over what happened to the bad ones, and what we remember about them. 

So go ahead, tell those women that a condom is cause for excommunication. Tell those women that the greatest threat to their liberty is some other lady in their health plan getting the pill for free. Tell those women, who lost their sisters, who lost their aunts, who lost their mothers, who saw the women around them worn out and rubbed down to nothing, that they don't have the right to painlessly, reasonably ensure that they live to care for the family they want. Let's have that fight. Let's haul out all the arguments. 

Let's talk about how God really wants our infant mortality rate to skyrocket. Let's talk about how many women, exactly, God wants dead. Let's make adherence to a rule of the modern world the be-all and end-all test of who is a true believer. That's never gone horribly wrong before. 

Let's have that fight, because there's no way it goes the way the bishops think it's going to go. This is the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in 1968: 

In view of the American tradition of freedom and pluralism, it would be a serious mistake to use the encyclical as a kind of Catholic loyalty test. Nothing could so quickly snuff out the spirit of per­sonal responsibility, which has done so much to invigorate American Catholicism in the past few years.

Nothing could be more discouraging to young people and intellectuals, upon whom the future of our Church so greatly depends. Nothing could be more destructive of the necessary autonomy of Catholic universities and journals, which have begun to prosper so well. Nothing, finally, could be more harmful to the mutual relations of trust and cordiality that have recently been established between bishops and theologians.

He could have been speaking directly to the bishops and their power-hungry enablers in Congress today. Have that fight. Go ahead. You won't like the outcome. I've been saying for years that our vicious abortion politics are burning down everything else the Church has ever considered important, and this? This is like throwing a bottle of lighter fluid onto the kindling before striking the match. 

A. 

The long arm of the law, in your uterus

I feel more empowered already.

"Today's ruling is a victory for all who stand in defense of life. Every life lost to abortion is a tragedy, and this important sonogram legislation ensures that every Texas woman seeking an abortion has all the facts about the life she is carrying, and understands the devastating impact of such a life-ending decision. We will continue to fight any attempt to limit our state's laws that value and protect the unborn."

We will, however, continue to dismantle and destroy those laws and systems that value and protect living children. Once they're born, those little suckers are on their own

Happy Hanukkah!

A.

Headline of the day

It comes from the Telegraph in the UK:

'Harry Potter and yoga are evil' says Catholic Church exorcist

I wonder what Tom Wilkinson and Max Von Sydow would say about this story...

Jeez, Timmeh

The Tebowmaniacs are at it again, y'all. As an atheist I cannot call this blasphemous but tacky is tacky is tacky:

I traded a few emails with Scout yesterday about this idiocy, which inspires me to ask this question: what would you put on the back of a Tebow jersey?

I'd put: Malaka.

Jindal blows a gaping hole in Perry's waterline even wider

 

All right - excuse me for getting out of my box, but I don't see this anywhere else on the interwebz. It made me choke on my ham, onion, and jalapeno omelette.

The MTP bobbleheads had the surrogates for Romney and Perry on this morning, and the subject turned to the M-word:

(Gregory) There’s this issue of”Governor Romney is a Mormon”, this has become an issue in the campaign, pastor Robery Jeffress introduced Rick Perry and said the following:

 (clip runs)

(Jefferson) “So we want a candidate who s a good, moral person? Or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the lord Jesus Christ? Mitt Romney is a good, moral person – but he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity, yet it’s always been considered historically to be a cult by evangelical Christians,”

(clip ends)

 (Gregory) Has Governor Perry satisfactorily distanced himself from this pastor in Governor Romney’s mind?

 (Pawlenty) Well, in my view, David, it’s disappointing that Governor Perry and others who didn’t denounce pastor Jeffress and those comments more directly, We have a country where we don’t have prohibitions on a particular church attendance for public office. In fact, it’s prohibited in the U.S. Constitution.

 (Gregory) Governor Jindal, are you disappointed in Governor Perry? Have you told him he should more formally denounce…

 (Jindal) I don’t think it’s for any of us to judge somebody else’s religious views, their relationship with God. The Bible is very clear, that’s up to God, not us. (…) It’s not for any of us to judge somebody’s faith, relationship to God, I think that would be inappropriate. The Bible is very clear, that’s not our role.

OK.

Pawlenty says that religious tests are against the Constitution, and Jindal says the answers are RIGHT THERE IN THE BIBLE!!!

Even Perry has to be doing a facepalm over this one.

Quote of the day

It comes from a post by the Guardian's Andrew Brown about Mitt Haircut's Mormonism:

Modern public Mormons are almost parodically conformist and technocratic. The public image of Mitt Romney is not of a man who holds strange beliefs that he will act on if elected, but the opposite – a man who has no principles whatsoever, and almost no personality. Abstinent, frugal, hard-working and rich, the Mormons have moved from the fringe of American life to its centre – not least because their religion is so intensely American. Whether or not it's crazy, it has worked.

NOLA Potpourri for $200, Alex

October is my favorite month of the year in New Orleans. The heat finally breaks and the chances of a tropical system starts to diminish. It's also been a very newsy few weeks here so I thought I'd share.

The big story right now is the passing of former Archbishop Philip Hannan at the advanced age of 98. Hannan was a larger than life figure. He was a chaplain with the 82nd Airborne in World War II and jumped with his flock thereby earning a series of nicknames, my favorite being the Parachuting Padre. Holy Father Mulcahy, Batman.

Hannan hasn't been the head holy joe in NOLA since 1988 but he's stayed around and enjoyed a busy retirement. His other claim to fame is that he was close to the Kennedy family: he married Jack and Jackie and officiated at JFK, RFK and Jackie O's funerals. The tourists have been pumping me for info about Hannan and it's easy to tell who the Democrats are: they're impressed by that detail, the Goopers shrug and say "whatever." Hannan hewed to the church party line on issues involving sexual politics but preferred talking about the church's stands on social justice. On the debit side, he buried his head in the sand when it came to perv priests but managed to get through that with his popularity intact.

Yesterday there was a procession that brought Archbishop Hannan's body 4 miles from a seminary Uptown to St Louis Cathedral. I popped out and saw the end of this funereal promenade and it was quite a sight. The tourists were quite interested and astonishingly well-behaved. The Archdiocese's public teevee station, WLAE, has had a macabre video stream up showing the viewing of Hannan's open casket. I *hate* open coffin funerals; especially when the deceased was elderly and frail. Somebody should have called the Fisher brothers...

I'd originally planned to write about other NOLA news but there's a shop to be tended and stuff to be sold so it's time for me to STFU for now.

Rapture Rupture

As a confirmed atheist,  I think the single dumbest thing about evangelical Christianity is the rapture aka armageddon, which is not to be confused with carmageddon even if the two are equally stupid. The latest poll of GOP primary nutters voters is pretty darn interesting: not only is Michelle Bachmann in the lead nationally BUT PPP asked voters the following question:

This is patent nonsense but good news nonetheless: when the fake rapture happens, Sarah Palin will be whisked away to wherever the hell these dipshits go. Then we won't have to hear about her any more. That's almost enough to make me want to wait for the end of the world:

 

Those zany Mormons

I hold no brief for Mormons: if I see two tall white guys wearing clip-on ties and riding bikes in my neighborhood, I run for cover. I don't, however, think that LDS views are any sillier than those of Baptists, Hindus or Rastafarians. As an atheist, I find most religious beliefs to be somewhat absurd BUT I find it fascinating that folks who take the Bible literally think that Mormons are some weird cult ala the People's Temple or the Manson family. Sure, LDSers have some odd views but they're no stranger than immaculate conception or creationism.

I stumbled upon the clip below at Kevin Drum's blog. It's a zany/wacky take on what Memphians think of Mormons and Mitt Haircut. It even includes a man on the street segment:

 

Other than Islam, I find it inconceivable that a local teevee news show would mock any religion. They should leave such mockery to internet wise asses and Bill Maher. It *almost* makes me feel bad for Mitt Romney. Almost.

There are many reason to oppose Romney's White House bid but his religion isn't one of them. I wouldn't vote for him because he's a Republican but I'd consider voting for LSDers such as the Udall cousins. In fact, I was a great admirer of the late Congressman Mo Udall who was one of the wittiest people to ever run for President. Mo was indeed a member of a cult: progressive Mormons.

Louisiana Lege Lowdown

The Louisiana Lege is in session and passing stupid laws, which is what they do. Our statewide politics have taken on a somewhat surreal quality: Governor PBJ is thus far unopposed for re-election but keeps losing key votes in the Lege on issues that matter to him. PBJ, however, is lucky in his enemies: the Louisiana Democratic party is in disarray and barely even exists any more. That means that PBJ can pander and fast talk his way to re-election whilst delusions of the White House dance in his feverish little mind.

The good news for PBJ is that the House just passed an initiative that he supports and the vote was unanimous as it's likely to be in the Senate as well. It red lights-you guessed it-a Ten Commandments thingamabob to be displayed on the state capitol grounds. It's, alas, based on the Texas monument that the Supremes okayed in 2005. Our Lege usually doesn't bother with such niceties when it comes to religion and pandering to the biblethumpers.

I have a friend who used to be a Louisiana State Senator back in the days when there still were some White populist/progressive Democrats in the Lege. He was an agnostic but shocked the hell out of me when he voted for a creationism measure. He explained to me that you could "never vote against God and get away with it. The peckerwoods would put your private parts in a vise and squeeze tight. Besides, the federal courts will shoot this dumbshit bill down."

That's what happened to the 1980's version of the "creation science" bill. Unfortunately, times have changed and the Roberts court will accept almost anything that's dolled up in "secular purpose" drag. The courts are unwilling to "vote against God" now either.

It's a pity that the right wing Catholics among the Supremes have forgotten that laws aimed at their faith used to exist in some of the more exuberantly Protestant parts of the country. Al Smith did poorly in the then solid Democratic South because people thought that his election would put the Pope in the White House. Now right wing Catholics and evangelicals are allies in Louisiana and elsewhere, which could be evidence to refute evolution since we're marching backwards instead of evolving.

I'll let Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond have the last word:

 

The Case Of The Foiled Moil

Dicks are still in the news. There's an effort in San Francisco and Santa Monica to ban via the ballot box male circumcision as a form of mutilation. I'm not sure what I think of this but there are some Rabbis who are rabid about the issue. Many moils are in turmoil as well...

Well, they vote on everything in my home state so why not this?  California may be low on money right now but there may be an excess of foreskins very soon...

And I haven't even started on the briss jokes...

Quote of the day

Texas Governor Rick Perry used to talk secession but now he's got Potomac fever. He's doing the big pander to the religious right in Texas by telling everyone to ask Jesus for rain. (We're having a drought too so I kinda expect PBJ to call an exorcist or something.) Here's Ricky:

"there is hope for America ... and we will find it on our knees."

I gotta say this is one of the best straight line I've seen in a long time. Anyone have any wisecracks to share? Btw, if I saw Rick Perry on his knees I'd dub him Sir Malaka...

Malakas Of The Week: The U.S. Conference Of Catholic Bishops

It's institutional malakatude time again here at First Draft. The Catholic Bishops have issued their long awaited report on pervy pedophile priests. Do they blame celibacy? Hell, no. They blame hippies like Wavy Gravy and Woodstock, man.

The report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

Hmm, I wonder what kind of weed the authors of the report were smoking: I want some, man.

This is a ridiculous conclusion that lets the Bishopric (apt image, no?) off the hook. My theory is that celibacy and sexual repression were the primary causes. Imagine a very religious young man who finds himself turned on by other men; something that is verboten under Catholic doctrine. He struggles against his desires and realizes that there's no better place to repress sexual longings than the priesthood. Some of those young men had genuinely perverse desires to repress but not according to the lawyers who wrote the report:

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

This is not a "report" it is an argument on behalf of the Bishops. That's right, the same men who either stuck their heads in the sand, looked the other way or actively covered up for pervy padres. The Bishops continue to allow their need to defend themselves from litigation to overwhelm their pastoral duties to their parishioners.

The only positive thing I can say about the "report" is that at least it doesn't blame same-sexuality, which some members of the Catholic clergy and laity are prone to do. The whole thing reeks of malakatude of the most odious kind.

I'm not Catholic but my wife is and we live in a very Catholic city. Dr. A stopped going to mass because she got tired of being hectored by Opus Dei-style right wing priests on hot button social issues like abortion instead of hearing about social justice and protecting the weakest members of society such as children. Of course, our former Archbishop Alfred Hughes helped run the pervy priests cover-up for Cardinal Law in Boston so what else could we expect?

Finally, back to the preposterous imagery that this report planted in my brain: blame it on Woodstock. If that's the case perhaps the Bishops need a new logo: something along the lines of the keep on truckin' guy in a cassock holding a lighter whose flame forms a cross with the Woodstock logo in the background. That would be silly but no sillier than this report's passing the buck from the Church to hippies and free love. Bollocks.

It's time for the Bishops to face the music instead dancing around the truth:

 

 

 

Malaka Of The Week: Metropolitan Seraphim Of Piraeus

This week's malaka with other bearded dudes. He's the one who talks loudly *and* carries a big stick.

I like naming a malaka of the week who knows from malakatude. This week's "honoree" is, in fact, a Greek Orthodox Bishop who is a real Greek and a bona fide bearded malaka, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus. I was raised in the American Greek Orthodox Church and the Priests I knew as a kid were mostly bleeding hearts who marched with Dr. King and against the Vietnam War. The Greek Greek Church is a different kettle of fish altogether. Exhibit A is Metropolitan Malaka who blames Greece's financial meltdown on the Jews:

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the bishop “said that there is a conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy. He also accused international Zionism of trying to destroy the family unit by promoting one-parent families and same-sex marriages.”

According to the news agency, when the bishop was then asked, “Why do you disagree with Hitler’s policies? If they are doing all this, wasn’t he right in burning them?” he replied: “Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire.” He added that Jewish bankers like “Rockefeller, Rothschild and Soros control the international banking system that controls globalization.”

The Rockefellers are Jewish? Who knew? Also, Seraphim the Beard's information is rather out of date: the Rockefellers are no longer at the center of the worldwide conspiracy against clerics with more hair than sense. He needs to upgrade his tinfoil hat...

It makes me wonder what Metropolitan Malaka wears under his cassock. Could it be a teabag? He certainly sounds a lot like some of the crazier American wingnuts such as Gret Stet Fuhrer wannabe David Duke. The whole international Zionist conspiracy shit is tired and trite but, apparently, so is Metropolitan Malaka.

This bearded twit is also a rabid homphobe, which is ironic given that he's bejeweled and wears a dress albeit a long, scratchy and unattractive one. Check this rant out:

Earlier this year, the bishop wrote to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to demand that Elton John be stripped of his knighthood for telling Parade magazine, “Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man.” The bishop also complained to Britain’s ambassador to Greece about the singer’s “unacceptable and absurd” comment, which, he said, had caused “deep pain and bitterness.”

I wonder if this bearded boob doth protest too much. Who the hell takes either Parade Magazine or  Reg Dwight's knighthood this seriously? Unless, that is, they're headline hunting, which seems to be the Metropolitan's racket.

His bailiwick is Piraeus, which is the largest port in Greece. It makes me wonder if he's a Hellenic Ted Haggard who has been known to say "hey, sailor." That's, of course, rank speculation of the sort that the Piraeus putz traffics in but what's a little rank speculation among friends?

Stumbling into this story has me contemplating dressing up as Seraphim for Mardi Gras. I think I have a long black cassocky thing and can easily obtain black whiskers. It could be a deeply scary costume; especially if I can get my hands on one of the incense shaker things that Orthodox priests use quite promiscuously during mass. Of course, nobody will get it; particularly because everyone thinks Seraphim is an angel and not a malaka. From beatitude to malakatude in a matter of minutes...

Malaka Of The Week: Bryan Fischer

I didn't write a malaka of the week post last week but the malakatude kept rolling. This week's winner is some hairbag I'd never heard of before but Bryan Fischer is a class-A malaka and worthy of this "honor."  This douchebag is the "issues" director of the American Family Association and he's also a guy who puts the ass in association.

While the rest of America celebrated the heroism and humility of Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, Mr. Fischer slammed the selection in a post at his AFA blog:

We have feminized the Medal of Honor. According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one.

Gen. George Patton once famously said, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his." [Note: Patton either said bastard or son of a bitch. He was a cussing General. So, fuck you for misquoting him, Malaka Fischer.]

When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.  That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night? I would suggest our culture has become so feminized that we have become squeamish at the thought of the valor that is expressed in killing enemy soldiers through acts of bravery. We know instinctively that we should honor courage, but shy away from honoring courage if it results in the taking of life rather than in just the saving of life. So we find it safe to honor those who throw themselves on a grenade to save their buddies.

I would suggest, sir that you're a buffoon, idiot and, above all else, a malaka. I looked up Fischer's bio and was "shocked" to learn that he's another in a long line of blood thirsty chickenhawks with no military record. It's very easy for an armchair warrior like Fischer to prattle on about the glory of killing when he's never had to aim a weapon at anyone in his life. Neither have I but I have enough sense to know that when soldiers are in the field they're fighting for their own lives and those of their comrades. If someone in your unit is killed, a part of you dies as well.

My father was a World War II veteran. He hated war and refused to discuss his war time experiences. I wish that he had but I know that whatever he went through was so painful that he had no interest in reliving it. He was a conservative Republican BUT hated guns and wouldn't allow one in our house. He was an Army interpreter so I don't know if he ever had to shoot at anyone but he thought war was a horrible thing that should only be waged when all else failed. I guess Malaka Fischer would consider that a sign of creeping feminization. I call it humanity. Of course, the only human life that creeps like him value is in vitro.

I have a pretty good idea of where the Bryan Fischers, Newt Gingriches and Dick Cheneys of the world got their sick and twisted notions about the "glory" of war: John Wayne movies. Guess what guys, John Wayne was a chickenhawk who dodged the draft in World War II and stayed in Hollywood to further his film career. Wayne spent the rest of his life overcompensating for this by being a rabid war lover, which is why his influence on "manly" rightwingers is so ironic. 

The most fascinating thing about Malaka Fischer's attack on Sgt. Giunta is that the latter is everything a hero should be. He's modest, humble and self-sacrificing. He melted my icy blue heart when he said that he'd give up the medal in a heartbeat if he could bring his fallen friends back to life. That's the stuff that real heroes are made of. To extend, and perhaps even strain, the cinematic analogy, Sgt. Giunta reminds me of Gary Cooper as Sgt. York, a soft spoken pacifist turned warrior whose heroism was motivated by the desire to protect his brothers in arms. We need more modest Gary Coopers and fewer strutting John Waynes in the world as well as more men like Salvatore Giunta and fewer malakas like Bryan Fischer.

Someone Put A Guard In The Basilica of St. Clare In Assisi

'Cause S&M Jesus is at risk from morons like this.

(Ripped off from Cole's place.)

Come Together Goes To Church?

Here's a clip that's floating around the interweb of a preacher performing John Lennon's nonsense dadalike tune, Come Together, at some mega-church in Plymouth, Michigan. Hey maybe that's it: when I think Plymouth I think of the rock and the Beatles were rockers. Hallelujah. Wait a darn minute, I'm still confused:

 

WTF are they on about? The lyrics are highfalutin gibberish a la Jabberwocky. Praise be to Brothers John, George, Ringo and Macca. Woo.

Via Bill Corbett of MST3K and Rifftrax's twitter feed.

This weird use of a Beatle song and all the Jesus posts here yesterday, implanted an earworm but it's not Come Together. Instead, it's a Lennon tune that features this lyrical refrain: "Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be. The way things are going they're gonna crucify me."

 

 

Jesus With Boobs? Seriously?

That's Jesus with boobs. Folks, it only goes downhill from here.

So I'm sure all of you good people read our Lord and Savior Athenae's post below; if you haven't, shame on you.  Also say 20 Hail Lombardis, and think about what you haven't done.  It turns out that some religious dopes you'll never meet are outraged that some art gallery you've never heard of in a town you'll never visit is daring--daring!--to show something that might not validate all of their stupid religious beliefs.

For the life of me, I don't know how a crowd of these god-botherers isn't following me around every day.  I can't go 30 minutes without "disgrac[ing] the God of all creation."  I have toothpicks made from the True Cross.  I use the shroud of Turin as a piddle pad for dogs.  I'd use Bible pages for toilet paper, but those gilt edges will give you cuts you can't believe in places you don't want 'em.  And that's just what I do for Christians.  Before breakfast.  On Tuesday.

Anyway, I don't know what they're bitching about.  Their religion and their god is a lot freakier than depicted in those photos.  And I don't mean that vanilla shit like hanging out with hookers.  That's what I do after breakfast.  On Tuesday.  It's quite routine, and there's nothing scandalous about it.  No, I'm talking about some pretty serious S&M.  From hairshirts to flagellants to straight-out martyrs, Christians have been into serious S&M and bondage shit for two millennia now.  Think about that.  For longer than Catholic priests have been raping little boys, Christians have been all about emulating suffering, and what do they call the feeling they get when they've suffered enough?  Ecstasy.  I mean, they're not even trying to hide it.  Of course, it's not like they're not taking their cues from the guy who kicked off the whole party, either.  Check this shit out:

 

If this doesn't get Bill Donohue after me, I don't know what will.

That is the Cross of San Damiano, courtesy of Wikipedia.  Like all medieval representations of Jesus, it is 100% accurate.  Take a good look at Jeebus there.  Above the loincloth.  I'll wait.

 

 

Holy shit!  Did you see that?  I think they crucified him because they were scared of his dick! 

That Jesus was into the wildest-ass masochism this side of the women who vote Republican.  Forget "why did you forsake me;" this guy was saying "Father, forgive them, because this has me hotter than the Fourth of July.  Which hasn't been invented yet."

So I don't know what these people are so upset about.  The image they're pissed at is tamer than what might as well be a photograph of their god.  Is that the problem, after all?  "This is an outrage--our god was WAY kinkier than that!"

Damn.  If that's so, I've been way too harsh with these people.  Maybe they're alright, after all.