I think it is pretty clear that their “deeply held beliefs” are misogynist. Not that that instantly means Catholics are misogynists… some are great, some are horrible. What is really upsetting about this is that, even though there are a lot of Catholics (ordained and laity) trying to improve the church and use it for good, you’ve got pushback from a series of conservative popes (and cardinals, bishops, etc—old guard).

You can make a lot of similar arguments about the Episcopalians sucking for sharing much of the same ideology, but we don’t feel the urge too, because good guy Episcopalians have a lot more control and actual wield the church to positive outcomes sometimes. This crap, on the other hand, is exactly what was flashing before all of our eyes when they announced Ratzy.

My point: it isn’t the church that’s the problem, it is the assholes.

“when you investigate and persecute nuns for committing acts of feminism?  Sorry, but fuck you.  You’re a bunch of woman-hating pieces of shit.”

Welcome to the real world, Amanda.

“Complaints of feminism and activism”? I’m afraid I’ll need a specific definition of that, please.

Are you suggesting that I wasn’t living in the real world?  Or that I wasn’t actually aware that the Catholic church is misogynist?  Did you just find this blog?  This post is pure sarcasm; I’m a long-standing critic of misogyny and religion.

Just trying to redirect your fire… actually, I started reading you after the Edwards fiasco. “This sounds like someone I should be reading.” Or were you slamming Mark?

Honestly, I am gobsmacked by the impolitic timing of this. Maybe they saw “Doubt” and got confused about who the bad guy was.

I have to wonder if any of this is a consequence of the recent healthcare debate.  All of the wingnut Catholic legislators and pundits put a ton of stock into the fact that U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stood firmly against the legislation, but you didn’t hear a peep from douchebags like Bill Donahue when a broad coalition of American nuns sent a letter to Congress pushing for the passage of HCR, a position completely contrary to that of the USCCB.

Scientology needs to kick it up a notch. It’s losing ground as the go-to ‘totally crazy to believe in’ religion.

Not you, human.  Mark.  I’m genuinely confused as to what he meant, if he’s being sarcastic or missed that I am or what.

Well, you have to give the Vatican its due:  they found one of the last groups in the Church working to help people and plan to systematically hunt them down and burn them at the stake

“My point: it isn’t the church that’s the problem, it is the assholes.”  The church does nothing to stop the assholes.  At some point, if you neither leave nor roast their nuts over a fire, you are providing passive support of the assholes - sins of omission are still sins.  And anyone saying “The Church has historically helped others” can only say that with a straight face if you define “historically” as “between 2:30 pm and 2:34 pm 25 March, 1604 in a back alley in a Bavarian town so small it has no name” and “helped” as “raped children”- because the Church have been sociopathic assholes pretty much every second since the damn hippy got nailed up on the pole and they could get around to being assholes without him complaining at them.

In defense of the Episcopalians, their relationship to the crazy appears to be centrifugal, instead of centripetal force. The schisms within the Episcopal church as of late tend to be extremely conservative groups splintering off and forming their own reformed versions (one of which I belonged to for a confused time) because of the church’s stance on women and gays. The Vatican is pulling the misogynist cobags closer in, not casting them off.

It’s not clear why the local orders are being singled out.  The Renton Sisters of Providence run a women’s transition house. The Tacoma Dominicans… work to end human trafficking.

The second two sentences explain the first one.  This is an attempt to (1) shore up the “traditions” of the Catholic Church (ie, go back to the Middle Ages), (2) put “uppity women” back in their place, and (3) change the subject from the numerous scandals by male clergy.  If they can in any way claim that, “See, women are bad too!”, then they have a new scapegoat/shiny object of distraction.  Perhaps the Magdalene Laundries are too far in the past to count - they need something new to point at?

All of the priests and nuns who have lost their lives over the years while trying to feed the poor and free the oppressed must be rolling in their graves.

The sooner that institution dies, the better off the world will be.

Ponygirl, I love Episcopalians—and your centrifugal/centripetal analogy is perfect (and brilliant). It even goes back to the origin of the church, when the Catholic church was so self-involved and conservative that they lost England, just like so many other Catholics through the years. Yeah, the new church was formed around a different center of gravity.

Yeah, asshole in charge of the church. Assholes running point for the guys in charge of the church. Assholes outside of the church but hiding behind it so they can be huge assholes. Assholes suck.

I was being sarcastic. Guess I’m not as good at it as you are?

Your ignorance of the investigation of these communities is only exceeded by your bigotry against Catholocism.  After all we can’t have an organization as big as the church opposing abortion and gay marriage, so it has to be torn down.  The feminism being referred to is the heretical positions regarding sacred orders.  It is the public opposition to church teaching on who is ordainable and who is eligible to be married in the church. 
I originally started to read this blog to see if the hatred toward the church that got you dumped from the Edward’s campaign was real.  It is, and the fact that you couldn’t see through John Edward’s unbelievable level of phoniness tells me all I need to know about your ability to discern much of anything. 
I thought it might be fun to interact with you and your readers.  Then when I realized that real dialogue wasn’t really part of the echo chamber here, it became fun to just poke you, just like kicking over a fire ant mound.  That has lost its appeal and I won’t be wasting my time or yours anymore. 
The level of hatred is just too hard to take.

I greatly admire most of the nuns I know.  I went to catholic school and the nuns were far and away one of the only bright spots in that horrid place.  The fact that the institutional church would want to ‘investigate’ nuns for doing good works, like tying to stop human trafficking, is horrific.  Nuns are the food soldiers, putting themselves in danger, working hard for no reward, and the men who live in palaces in Rome want to investigate them?  Seriously messed up.

I think it’s particularly telling that J2P2 (and I think Ratzinger to a lesser extent) were/are reportedly into the cult of Mary. Virgin/whore dichotomy (where the virgin is mythical and any real woman is a whore) is so tired.

(The original cult of mary, which was more of a grassroots thing in the middle ages, was pretty interesting, from what little I know of it. Suppressed very vehemently.)

Tom—

Coming from a Catholic background myself, I’m very interested to hear what “heretical positions regarding sacred orders” you believe these nuns are taking.  Is it their position against human trafficking?  The halfway house for battered women?  Are you saying it’s wrong to fight sex slavery and wife beating?  Because I don’t recall that from my CCD lessons.

See, #17 is what happens when you attack the church instead of assholes like the pope.

It’s not the church, it’s the assholes…in charge of the church?

Just so: the same authoritarian arseholes who resisted even the mildest suggestion (see Vatican II) that priests should serve the flock rather than the other way ‘round.

If they didn’t have the staffing problem, they’d jettison the uppity nuns and go priest-only. And if they didn’t need the cash, they’d jettison the uppity American and European Catholics and focus on operating where they’ve usually thrived: developing nations rife with poverty, poor education systems, and sexism and ethnic conflict (confused Catholic conservatives can substitute the phrase “traditional values”).

The level of hatred is just too hard to take.

I know it’s hoping too much, but does this mean you’ll be leaving us, now that you’ve finally discovered how horribly intolerant we are of intolerant and sexist authoritarians?

See, #17 is what happens when you attack the church instead of assholes like the pope.

No, 17 happens even if you do attack the pope, because with many people it’s not about removing the bad people from the church, it’s about protecting misogyny.

There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with nuns (who hold no ecclesial authority) stating for the record that they disagree with positions on things like ordination of women.

If they were holding their own illicit ordinations, or claiming priestly authority, or you know, DOING anything out of line with policy, then discipline might be in order. Saying “we will obey these rules but we think they are wrong” is hardly something worth investigating - especially in the face of ever-growing proof that a huge number of priests were involved in criminal child abuse with the full knowledge, complicity, and coverup of their superiors.

What level of hatred is appropriate for child rapists?

No, 17 happens even if you do attack the pope, because with many people it’s not about removing the bad people from the church, it’s about protecting misogyny.

There’s also a contingent of Catholics that genuinely agrees with Ratzi and his cronies that the Church is not the laity but the priests, and specifically the hierarchy. As far as they’re concerned, an attack on the Pope is an attack on the Church and all Catholics.

Comment 17 happens mainly because there are authority-worshiping Catholic idiots out there who take Bill Donohue seriously, and who want to replicate his media-whore trolling on a scale they can (barely) handle.

A haiku in memorium:

Asshole throws a fit
Leaves Pandagon forever
Not one of us cares.

The level of hatred here is just too hard to take.

I’m pretty sure the Vatican outdoes us with their hatred of women.

After all we can’t have an organization as big as the church opposing abortion and gay marriage, so it has to be torn down.

Where’s the obligatory claim that Church does good things like defend immigrants or oppose war and the death penalty? Speaking of which, do you think they’ll deny communion to any non-bigots-who-are-concerned-about-the-enforcement-of-immigration-law? Any lobbying at all?

The feminism being referred to is the heretical positions regarding sacred orders.  It is the public opposition to church teaching on who is ordainable and who is eligible to be married in the church.

So insubordination requires a court martial just like in the armed forces? Why is it called feminism, specifically? Why not just heretical positions?

The usual defense of the Church of Rape is they do good things in the world too, and that outweighs the bad stuff. Yet these nuns do good things, like trying to stop human trafficking for instance, and yet that isn’t worth the temerity of thinking bitches an faggots might be human beings.

This inquisition has been going on for a couple years now.  It is most certainly to put the nuns in their place, which is serving and servicing priests, quietly and reverently.

It’s fucked up.

Two thirds of the American bishops have shuffled pedophiles around, and most of them continue to stomp around demanding to be respected.  Bernard Law was removed…to a luxurious retirement as a reward for ‘protecting’ the universal Church at the expense of children.

Vatican II was for the good of the Church.  It’s not going to survive unless the priestly class listens to its laity.  Ordinations are down, donations are down, and even the Irish are not attending Mass.  Not b/c their evil or because the modern world has corrupted them somehow, but because the Catholic hierarchy has nothing relevent to add to their lives. 

There’s tradition.  There’s social communities.  But when the priests rape children, and it’s just covered up “for the good of the Church”...it’s just too far.  Most people like to believe that their priests are okay, “Not my Nigel”, but now that it’s obviously global and the Pope is still not chastising the bishops, but is instead running inquisitions on nuns and whining that the evil media shouldn’t be publicizing their crimes—because it’s the publicity that’s the real evil, not the crimes.

Please.

I’m so glad I’m out.  They aren’t touching my kids.  Literally or figuratively.

I was raised Catholic, and attended Catholic schools until college, and I think many of those places had a positive impact on my life. However, I’ve never felt that these were institutions I could support, on the grounds of logic and feminism. Also, that Catholic high school is also where I learned that ‘pious’ adults could be power-hungry assholes who hurt people just because. On the whole, I’m glad I will never have children, and if I do, they will never come anywhere near the church.

Not that that instantly means Catholics are misogynists… some are great, some are horrible.

Sorry, but I am so sick and fucking tired of this bullshit.  When you find out that your church or any other organization has been protecting pedophiles, you either try to change it - and when that becomes obviously impossible - as it has because of the church structure - then you get out or admit that you are a willing supporter of pedophiles.  And now, a wiling supporter of persecuting misogynists.

The level of hatred here is just too hard to take.

No. The level of hatred the Catholic Church levels at its parishioners is too hard to take, if you are human enough to conceive of the notion of feeling hated.

If you are still Catholic, that is because there is no such thing as a level of hatred aimed at you that is “too hard to take.” Even if you’re not female—the entire church is based off the notion that you suck and should feel guilty all the time.

What is driving you off here is that we are not allowing you to displace the hatred you’re steeping yourself in through your continued Church involvement by pretending that at least you’re better than those stupid lady types.

I have to wonder if any of this is a consequence of the recent healthcare debate.

BINGO!

Here’s the problem:
http://www.catherineplace.org/

The other is probably that a connection to social justice means immigration support - and the RCC is now getting flak on that from it’s uber conservative supporters.

I’m glad that timmyofthebay was here to straighten Amanda out.  He opened up a big ol’ can a whupass on her!  Yeah!  She been schooled about the RCC, baby!  It’ll be a long time before she opens her dirty female yap about the long history of egregious misogyny and covering-up-for-child-rapists ways of The One and Only True Everyone-Else-is-Going-to-Hell-Especially-the-Protestants-and-the-Christ-Killers-But-Don’t-Think-We-Forgot-About-You-Mooslims-and-Hindoos Church!  Like maybe even a day or two! 

Take that! And there’s lots more where that come from!

And it’s obvious Amanda has suffered immensely since she left the Edwards campaign of her own accord — like getting two books published and moving to the Big Apple and blogging up a storm, all while enjoying her life and not compromising her feminist principles.  That’ll show her not to mess with the <strike>Spanish Inquisition</strike> The Catholic Avengers…

See, #17 is what happens when you attack the church instead of assholes like the pope.

Really? When you attack the church, your irritating troll-morons FINALLY fucking flounce, leaving your blog a happier, more intellectually fulfilling place? Well, scoot over so I can add to the church-attackin’.

There’s also a contingent of Catholics that genuinely agrees with Ratzi and his cronies that the Church is not the laity but the priests, and specifically the hierarchy. As far as they’re concerned, an attack on the Pope is an attack on the Church and all Catholics.

Catholicism, to me, is basically separated into two camps with individuals being pulled between the two.*

You have the hard liners, who love the hierarchy and treat the Pope like a flashy, irreproachable, demi-god. Loyalty is to remain unquestioned. It’s a haven for misogynists and abusers as the hierarchy gives those above absolute authority over those below and it fits so easily with their views that they should have a high placing in the world itself, particularly over women and children.  They have a vested interest in protecting absolute authority.

Then you have what I jokingly like to refer to as the “good Catholics”, who have views that diverge with the Church’s public stance about 90% of the time.  They realize that many of the policies are damaging and find the current actions of the church regarding abuse scandals, including the Pope’s, to be morally reprehensible.

There are of course those strung out in between who tend to share a commonality of being wracked with good ol’ Catholic guilt.  Many of whom would like to be an obedient Catholic but their conscious gets to them when the priests start abusing the kids.

* If they haven’t decided to give up the church all together.

how women are prevented from judging for themselves

I gotta say, thanks Amanda for refusing to equivocate about these kinds of attacks that the church uses on its members, for the “crimes” of feminism and activism. It really makes me hate the hierarchy, whatever my feelings about the Catholics I know. You have to assess what the organization as a whole is up to and you have to make judgements based on that.

The level of hatred here is just too hard to take.

Funny, I would think that’s something people would say about the Catholic Church, the world’s largest anti-gay hate organization.

After all we can’t have an organization as big as the church opposing abortion and gay marriage, so it has to be torn down.

Wrong. The problem isn’t that one religious sect has odd beliefs; speaking as the self-appointed representative of everybody here, nobody cares. The problem is the church’s insistence that everybody obey its dogma, the interference in the legislative process, and the efforts to move us one step closer to a theocracy.

After all we can’t have an organization as big as the church opposing abortion and gay marriage, so it has to be torn down.

I thought you were going to say we believed in objectionable things, not in self-evidential statements.

“The clergy they come in
Stand up now, stand up now
The clergy they come in
Stand up now

The clergy they come in
And say it is a sin
That we should now begin
Our freedom for us to win”
- The Diggers Song

After all we can’t have an organization as big as the church opposing abortion and gay marriage, so it has to be torn down.

If only it were only about equal marriage rights. The RCC hierarchy has declared war against LGBT folks and women. It’s not position on one policy, on gay issues it’s an overwhelming attempt to make life worse for LGBT people on every front, all the while babbling about treating us with “dignity” and “love.”

The “love” offered to LGBT people by the RCC is more akin to abuse than affection. It is completely worthless, without any value.

they got caught smoking reefers?

I see they’ve found the 21st century equivalent of witch-burning. Well, I suppose oen could allow that the non-violent nature of it represents progress of a sort…

Oh, and why yes, I do hate the Catholic Church. It’s a corrupt, criminal organization that spreads hatred and ignorance. Any decent person is morally obliged to hate it.

The hierarchy has declared war against anyone who’s not ordained.

Make no mistake.  When Ratzi met with the rape victims of priests—he prayed and HE CRIED.  That’s right, the POPE HIMSELF CRIED.

That’s it.

That’s the response.

That’s all you’re going to get.

The POPE deigned to listen to the rabble, and he was moved to TEARS!

We should all tremble now.

Seriously.

Why aren’t people trembling?  Get on your knees and tremble!

Stop expecting any real action to be taken against any bishop/cardinal/prince of the church!  No real reform is intended—the POPE CRIED!  What else do you people want?!!11!

They were sooooo close to revoking V2 and returning to medieval power!!!!  Now the evil Jews of the NYT keep blaspheming and publicizing the crimes.  If they’d just SHUT UP and treat the fact taht the POPE CRIED with the gravitas it deserves, this whole thing could be over.

The hierarchy genuinely has no clue that people love their children, and that raping them, even if done by someone ordained, is NOT OKAY.  That when the man who rapes them is a priest, that makes it even worse.  That it is NOT the priest who was victimized by those nubile 13 y/os.  That a “higher calling” means you are held to a higher standard, or else it is meaningless.

No.  Better to run an inquisition on nuns and take a vocal hardline stance on abortion.  THAT’S going to let everyone know how holy they are.

Addressing past crimes against the Church (again, it’s the people not the hierarchy)?  THE POPE CRIED!!!!  What else do you want?

Get on your knees and cry for the poor Pope who was moved to tears by the victims of policies he established and enforced under pain of excommunication.

Again, until Bernard Law is stripped of his luxurious castle suite and sent back to Boston, the Pope has no basis at all to claim any moral standing.

This issue is not going to go away, no matter how many times he cries and whines.  It’s self-evident evil, except to the assholes who perpetrate and continue to conceal it.

Again, until Bernard Law is stripped of his luxurious castle suite and sent back to Boston, the Pope has no basis at all to claim any moral standing.

QFT.

And even after that, such claims would be weak.

Caren, he cried?  What if some of the tears ran off his nose and got on to his red Prada shoes?  Do you know what tears from a demigod could do to fine Italian leather?  There could be a double tragedy if both the left and right shoes were ruined because of that! 

It’s probably best if God’s One-And-Only True Emissary on Earth not be exposed ever again to the money grubbing, unwashed “victims” of priestly “abuse”.  We just can’t take that risk…

Welcome to the deepest irony of the RCC:  women are its mainstay.  You look at all those committees and activities and it’s women who are sustaining them.  You look at the men in them and a large number are participating because of their wives.  My wife’s family is Catholic.  The women care about the RCC and participate and the men stay home and do what they want.

So, I’m a little late to the show, but I’m going to address some of the protests/comments to Amanda’s post. To those who insist that to attack the Church is wrong, but to attack the “assholes” is the right path you need to understand a little bit of Catholic theology. The Church is the bride of Christ—the Church is a consistent body in this cosmology and the literal “head” of the that mythical body is the Pope and the hierarchy. If the nuns, say the hands of this body, are not doing specifically what the “head” is telling them to do, then they are not actually part and parcel with that body. The head thinks, the hands do, but these autonomic and voluntary muscle movements must be directed by “the head.” As such, intellectual inconsistency (such as thinking that women are full human beings) is indicative of separateness from the body. If the entirety of the Catholic Church, the lay, the buildings in your small village, the convents & monestaries, all decided to break away from the headship of the “holy father” and the hierarchy, they would not be the Catholic Church. Only an entity specifically “headed” by the pope can, in Apostalic lineage, claim “catholic-ness” or wholeness as a body. Its tremendously clever and evil.

As an individual who has spent some time with kick-ass nuns (I’m a Unitarian, but I spent a couple weeks in the desert with some kick-ass nuns who were risking their lives to deliver water and first aid to undocumented border crossers in Arizona a couple summers ago), someone who participated in the ordination of a woman-priest and then witnessed the feminist-identified male priest who presided get ex-communicated and his pension revoked after 40 years of service, and whose best friend is a “good Catholic” who is also an atheist, I know that grassroots liberal Catholics are awesome. But so are liberals and rabble rousers in a variety of religions (love me some Reform Jews protesting Israeli policy). The key is “liberal.” Yes, these liberals use the best bits of their traditions in order to build their case and to draw strength from when in need, but their assumption question, justice seeking, feminist-identified and GBLTQQI-affirming beliefs are political and relational in nature, just like mindfully secular liberals. 

I participate in a liberal religious community because I think I/we work better for social justice in relation to one another. Many criticize UU’s for being intellectual book-groups with music. So be it. I’d rather hazard on the overly intellectual than the wish-washy spiritual. Some people are attracted to identity building organizations, I am one of those individuals. So, I get why many good Catholics want to stay and to reform—but they can’t just challenge the policies, they have to challenge the theology that is specifically misogynistic.

Someone mentioned the cult of the Virgin—that is was radical and then suppressed. Actually, that’s only a recent phenomenon. In the middle-ages, the cult of the Virgin was often used to clean-up after a pogrom against the Jews. You’ll find that many 12th-15th Century churches dedicated to Mary were actually built upon Jewish communities that were destroyed after the Jews were massacre(d). Marian worship, like Ann Coulter, was a great way to distract the faithful, not some way to find and honor the divine feminine, at the hierarchial at least, though many lay may have been drawn to that.

DBK @49

All the patriarchal religions rely on unpaid female labor. They’re the ones who organize the bake sales, make sure the organs and the finery are upkept, help balance the budgets, and clean up everything and make everything just right in the background.

It’s why the patriarchal religions are so firmly against anything to do with human rights. If those women in the churches find self-respect, learn they can be treated fully as equals and have the lives they want, how many of them are going to want to continue doing unpaid labor in the Church and in the homes? And furthermore, how many of them are going to get that twinkle in their eye and wonder about how if they’re already doing everything else…why not take over that last speaking role as well and actually get some renumeration for their tireless work?

Either way, that’s more risk and more work for a hierarchy who has ridden on the free-labor won by “tradition” and the beaten-down egos of women, so they’re desperate to see how long they can ride out feminism and hope it doesn’t penetrate the women-hating walls of their churches.

Same reason management throws a fit about promoting women and minorities into management positions and the possibility of clerical staff earning a promotion into regular staff or management. Those with a free ride are terrified by the possibility of it ending and hope that stubbornness as regards tradition will forestall it long enough to affect the next generation instead of them personally.

I had a priest say in his homily one Sunday that all the Catholic women should just boycott one week.  Refuse to do anything.  Everything would fall apart.  They wouldn’t be able to hold a single mass the next Sunday.

He expected to get calls from the bishops b/c someone would complain, but NO ONE SAID A THING.  Not one complaint.  Because we all know it’s true.

It’s a completely co-dependent, disfunctional relationship.  Even when the laity KNOWS the priests/bishops/higher ups are wrong, they find it very very difficult to leave the Church as a whole.

———-
Thealogian, you’re leaving out a major disfunctional doctrine of Catholicism that pre-dates V2: Conscience is primary.

Your conscience is God speaking to you.  Our laity is not supposed to blindly follow a leader, b/c God wants a questioning and intelligent following.  Jesus’ parables are full of prodigal sons who leave and then recognize the wisdom and return.  The older son?  The good one?  The one that always follows the rules?  Doesn’t get a fatted calf slaughter for him, and gets chastized for whining about the unfairness of it.

Even if you get excommunicated, it’s not necessarily going to send you to hell.  Galileo wasn’t stuck in purgatory for centuries until the hierarchy admitted it was wrong. 

It’s not a sin unless you truly believe it’s wrong and do it anyway—or fail to act in the case of sins of omission.

That’s why the nuns wrote the letter supporting HCR: they truly believed that saving the lives of people was more important than adding additional abortion restrictions.  They also understood that Hyde was still in effect.

The bishops were miffed that those uppity ladies said anything.  They should be hanging tapestries in the church and cleaning the place.  They can’t call them out directly, b/c the uppity women can hit them with their reasons, and conscience is primary.

So they have to look for something else.  The current inquisitions are all about threatening uppity nuns and trying to get them to be subservient and quiet.

Nuns are going to fight back.  These assholes haven’t been around many nuns, or women in general, in a long time.  They don’t get it at all.  They’re ordained!  Where’s the reverence?

Because while they’ll admit the conscience clause on questioning, they believe your conscience should tell you to obey what they tell you to do.  Failure to listen to the ordained is just a mistake at best.

They don’t get that by raping children and covering it up, they’ve lost all moral authority.  Why would ANYONE listen to ANYTHING they say when they can’t even protect children?  When they choose to protect rapists and sacrifice children, children they have sworn to serve, they’ve completely lost sight of what they are supposed to be.

Pretty much every Catholic who plays “Not my Nigel” at this point is guilty of sins of omission b/c they are tolerating and supporting rapists and those who shelter them.  The money does trickle up at some point, so even if your local, progressive parish does a lot of good, it still sends financial support to the Prada Prince.

Dear Pandagon,

I find the sentiments and arguments of tomonthebay to be extremely offensive.  Please cancel his subscription.

Sincerely,

Older

Amanda, tomonthebay has violated the stick rule,  please DTMFAASAP.

I realized the other day that the % of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood relative to other services is nothing compared to the % of priests who abuse. I can’t wait to pull that one out in an argument. The NYT had a priest apologist on one of their ‘bloggingheads’ video series who claimed that 4% of priests are accused of criminal sexual abuse.

I went into the wrong business.
All this time I could have been shaping my life on the teachings of the Marque de Sade and had the full backing of the Holy Roman Church.  Because I’m a man, and men are naturally holy unless tempred to fall from grace by a woman.  Thus, since I am naturally holy, everything I do is naturally holy, and I can do no wrong in the eyes of the church.  Laws of mortal man are as but wind through the trees.
/irony

Silly cynickal, you can’t do anything you want—its important that you do not have the consent of your partner. That’s key to the free pass.

I had a priest say in his homily one Sunday that all the Catholic women should just boycott one week.  Refuse to do anything.  Everything would fall apart.

Take away the word “Catholic” from that sentence, and there you have the world in a nutshell.