AVE MARIA SINGLES

If both partners bring Jesus to bed with them,

does that make it a three-way, or a four-way?

Pudinhand Wilson

Chapel of Love – The Crystals

In American football an “Ave Maria” is a long, last-second, desperation-motivated, forward pass that hopes against hope to turn impending defeat into miraculous victory.

Probably Anthony Buono had something else in mind when he named his Catholic “dating” service Ave Maria Singles, although the masthead sort of reinforces the football analogy.

The home page features this half hearted endorsement from a guy who looks like he’d much rather burn than marry.

I think members are supposed to be looking for marriage partners as opposed to casual dating. I wonder how AMS screens its applicants.

There must be plenty of Lotharios out there with a particular taste for sincere Catholic females, who find that “There’s something special about a practicing Catholic…”

The welcoming letter concludes thusly:

... Grace and peace of Christ to you in your search.

Sincerely in the Holy Family of Nazareth,
Anthony J. Buono, President

Mentioning the Holy Family kind of throws a wet towel on the passion aspect of marriage, considering the Catholic belief the Joseph and Mary never had sex. Great model!

As pointed out in the Jesuit Watch post A Marriage Act, a marriage is consummated only through sexual intercourse. For a couple that has never had intercourse to say that they are married is a lie.

In some weird way, these contradictions must contribute to erotic tension.

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SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

[In a previous post, Good Taste Means Knowing When to Stop, we discussed how much greater his reputation would have been if Bob Dylan had died in his 1965 motorcycle crash.]

Writing Jesuit Watch is mostly amusing but every once in a while I come across something truly painful, such as this picture of the once great Bob Dylan.

The accompanying story in the blog Whispers in the Loggia says that after the handshake:

The Pope then preached a sermon to the 300,000-strong audience. How many roads must a man walk down? "Just one," declared the Pope. What answer is blowing in the wind? "The breath and voice of the Spirit," he insisted, "a voice that calls and says, 'Come'."

For Bob Dylan to lend himself to an organization that threatens kids with hell is the most un-hip endorsement since Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard Nixon.

The Dylan-Pope handshake took place in 1997. The Whispers story appeared yesterday, something about the publication of a Pope Benedict book. The quote above might be from Benedict’s book, hard to tell.

The biggest story today on the Catholic web is that the Pope is expected to silence a Jesuit liberation theologist Rev. Jon Sobrino, S.J.

Liberation theology states that the Church should be concerned about justice for poor people. Pope Benedict says the communion wafer is all the food anyone really needs.

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CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ANTI-GAY

Sfmike has documented on his Civic Center blog how an ideological Board of Education has taken from its students the opportunity to participate in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp, J-ROTC. See his great photostories here, sample picture below.

Dressing up in uniforms and marching around and following orders isn’t every teenager’s idea of fun, but for the kids that enjoy it, where’s the fucking harm!

The School Board’s excuse was that the U.S. military discriminates against gays. There was no allegation that J-ROTC in San Francisco has discriminated against anyone and I would be shocked if they did. I suspect anti-military political correctness entered into consideration.

If the City wants to sever relations with organizations that discriminate against gay people I suggest starting with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church openly discriminates against gay people and women.

In addition to blatant employment discrimination the Catholic Church uses its tax exempt status to deny women (read poor women) the right to reproductive choice. They are opposed to any gay rights and they characterize gay sex as sinful. The Catholic Church actively discourages the use of condoms.

The Catholic Church has a right to exist and function within the City and County, but to be consistent, the City should immediately cease any non-legally-mandated relations with the Catholic Church.

And if the City isn’t willing to be consistent, it should give the schoolkids back their J-ROTC.

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THE VULTURE WORE SILK

The Anna Nicole body-custody trail deserved to be shown live on daytime cable news. It was fascinating television. It’s domination of evening programming is a little harder to justify, what with the Iraq disaster and the run up to nuclear war with Iran.

The judge’s manner received much criticism but I personally have no standard of comparison. The only court action I’ve seen is with only two parties involved in the case. In the just concluded hearing there were multiple parties with multiple lawyers. How the heck do you control them. It’s like a low paid manager trying to control a team full of high paid ballplayers.

Each lawyer is a prima dona and wants to steal the show. Judge Larry Seidlin, showed them, by his weirdness and unpredictability, that HE was the prima dona, HE was the one viewers would remember.

How frustrating for those high priced lawyers. Judge Seidlin demonstrated his dominance by talking about himself. Let’s say one of the lawyers does extensive research overnight on a point of law and tries to present it the next morning. Judge Seidlin cuts the lawyer off in mid-sentence and says the court doesn’t have time for that. Then the judge spends the next fifteen minutes talking about his career as a tennis instructor.

And he demonstrated, by over-sharing his own humanness with us, that all the messy human exigencies of all the contesting parties would be taken into account.

Judge Seidlin turned what could have been a mosh of carrion critters into a family gathering. We’ll see if his efforts have any positive effect.

Speaking of carrion critters, the Catholic Church is already picking at Anna Nicole’s corpse. Some bishop-prick named Morlino, operating out of Madison, is saying that Anna Nicole’s tragic life and death demonstrate the need to strengthen our marriage laws.

Basically what he’s saying is stronger laws would have kept Anna Nicole from being such a slut, and being a slut is what done her in.

Pud says that the bishop isn’t sincere. “He’s just following the Vatican directive that American clergy should try harder to associate themselves publicly with heterosexuality.

“The bishop wants us to think that he, too, noticed the size of her boobs, nudge nudge.”

So the shameless Catholic Church is using Anna Nicole to attack gay marriage, and any other form of sexual interaction that doesn’t jibe with Catholic teachings.

I wrote the following email to Whispers in the Loggia, which quoted Bishop Robert Morlino extensively.

Anna Nicole’s problems came from lack of love, not from lack of strong marriage laws. Her life was tragic because people exploited her for their own ends--just as you do in your 2/23/07 post.

Despicable. Shame on you.

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MORE DRAG

Some Protestants think that the Biblical “whore of Babylon” refers to the Roman Catholic Church. Looking at these two queens I have to agree.

They’re not turning many tricks these days, but they still like to pull out the rouge and the fine, if somewhat out of date, fashions, and reminisce about the old days when a good whore could get a little respect.

The guy on the left, Stanislaw Wielgus was promoted to be the head priest of Poland. The Pope, a former Hitler Youth himself, thought this old fuck was just the right guy for the job.

NYT gives an entertaining account.

Then reports circulated that Father Wielgus had been a secret collaborator with the former communist regime’s hated secret police, a whore/pimp relationship. He was spying on his fellow Catholics, including priests, and turning them in to be tortured and murdered, or something.

Like any corrupt corporate executive he denied the reports, thinking that all documentary evidence had been destroyed.

When documents did surface that clearly showed he had been working for the communist secret police, he had to admit to the collaboration, but claimed that his actions had somehow been non-harmful.

He’ll stick with that story until additional documents, if any, emerge.

Simpler than changing the policy on married priests, the church should outlaw all but cotton and wool garments for its clergy. By removing silk as a perk of promotion, a lot of priest-pervs will go elsewhere for their jollies.

Recently SFWILLIE’S BLOG, in the classic post Silly Goose, poked some gentle fun at gay uniform fetishists. Clothingwise they are pikers compared to the Catholic hierarchy, but morally so much more wholesome. As Pud says, "which would you want to take care of your kids?"

It’s long been my theory that people aren’t put in positions of power unless they have deep dark secrets that can be used to blackmail them out of any idea of independence.

Pedophilia has long served that purpose for Catholics. Now that the press and the victims have queered that deal, so to speak, past political crime seems to be the new cudgel.

Supporters of Bishop Wielgus blame ”the Jews” for his ouster.

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