What the Catholic Bishops Still Don't Get

Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami who bellyached to his RC flock on Sunday about "overeaching and unprecedented state power into the doman of religious freedom". Is he aware he's threatening his Church's tax-exempt status?


"Pelvic Morality" was a term used for decades to describe the unhealthy obsession of the Roman Catholic Church with the human pelvic region, including the female vagina, fallopian tubes and ovaries, as well as the male organs, including the seminal vesicles and testes. One philosopher has suggested this obsession dated from the time of St. Augustine (fresh from his Manichean mental domination) and the belief that female carnality was a refuge of demoniality.

Well into the Middle Ages this view persisted, manifesting in the belief (often echoed by Church Fathers such as Aquinas) that sins such a adultery demanded much more severe physical punishment of the female than her offending male counterpart. This was because by her nature she was deemed closer to the demonic hordes. Indeed, a widepsread belief among prelates late into the Enlightenment was that male virtue and mental acumen was easily "ensnared in female wiles and the flesh". Hence, the recommendation of those like Aquinas for the female body to taste the whip when caught out in such things as adultery, or simply fornication before marriage. (See also Ute Ranke-Heinemann's: Eunuchs in the Service of Christ).

On the male side, the Church's pelvic fetishists obsessed over the intrinsic nature of human sperm (spermatocytes) which were viewed as "homunculi" or tiny -miniature humans, at least until the first microscopes with sufficient power showed otherwise. Hence, any mischievous spilling of seed could not be countenanced, lest these miniature humans perished in a pleasure-induced "holocaust". Thus, the fierce proscriptions against masturbation, and the Vatican's pronouncements of being "mortal sins".

Wearing their little brains out, prelates locked away in their ivory towers and behind hallowed halls of ivy also concluded that if any artificial contraception was used - say in the marriage act- it had to become reduced to no more than "mutual masturbation" since the "natural outlet for new life" was impeded. If a married woman did this, then she could be no better than a whore - hence the recent recounting by columnist Gail Collins of how a long time friend went to confession, confessed her use of birth control to some old fart padre, and was told in a loud voice: "Then, Missus.....YOU are a WHORE!"

But do these assholes really know anything? Hardly! In today's WSJ, for example ('Contraceptive Plan Still Draws Heat'. p. A8) we are informed that:

"At masses across the country Sunday, Roman Catholic priests blasted the Obama administration's compromise on contraceptive insurance coverage".

Hmmmmm...... let me grasp this: RC padres across the nation are fulminating against Obama's contraceptive compromise? Have they not paid attention to the specific IRS rules, regulations that demand absolutely NO politicking or political rhetoric (which is what this is) if churches are to retain tax exempt status?

Clearly, then, since all these padres have violated those statutes, the Church's tax exempt status needs to be revoked forthwith! One can't exercise this clause for the evangelicals and not apply it to the Catholics!

In the same piece, another numskull - a Rev. Michael Quinn of San Francisco, is quoted as saying "this is our Rosa Parks moment!"

Uh, no dope-wad, it isn't! You see, NO one is telling you to stop your most fundamental beliefs! You can still believe in the immaculate conception, Transubstantiation- the whole works! Hell, you can still demand your own faithful follow that stupid, archaic birth control edict (that tries to preserve those tiny spermal homunculi...for the positive outcome of conception). But what you cannot do is exercise influence and occupy the public square while denying those who are NOT Catholics and who work in that public square, contraceptive benefits.

See, the analogy to that would be like Rosa Parks telling all the white people they can't be seated on that bus so long as black folks are on it! Get your analogies straight for once, douche brain.

Then another rotund, overfed twit, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami (see photo) bloviated about "overeaching and unprecedented state power into the doman of religious freedom"

Hardly! The actual "over reach" is the specious use of your own specious doctrines to deny health care rights via insurance that other employers are bound by laws - both state and federal - to give. So don't hand me that bollocks!

All of these Jacobins so exercised about their precious "religioous freedom" would do better to read Nicholas Kristof's op-ed "Beyond Pelvic Politics" in today's New York Times. As Kristof notes:

"A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day. (My data is from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health.)

One-third of women in another survey said they would switch birth control methods if not for the cost. Nearly half of those women were relying on condoms, and others on nothing more than withdrawal.

The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class women. "

Like me, Kristof is also puzzled by how many RC folks are really offended or if this is a case of the Bishop's bark trying to impress us that there's a mass "bite" lurking somewhere behind it. As he writes:

" it’s not clear how many people actually are offended. A national survey found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives. Moreover, a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that even among Catholics, 52 percent back the Obama policy: they believe that religiously affiliated universities and hospitals should be obliged to include birth control coverage in insurance plans. "

If a majority are behind Obama's compromise why the hell aren't they telling these noisome toads, the Union of Catholic Bishops, to STFU? One wonders! Why aren't Catholic women walking out of masses when these nitwits begin their scathing attacks on Obama and his policies? Are they that bound to the point of succumbing to a kind of perverse "Stockholm syndrome"?

Finally, I totally concur with Kristof when he concludes:

"I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population. "

Bingo! And it's time for Catholics to tell their padres and Bishops that it's past time to move beyond the human pelvis in terms of forging a realistic morality - as opposed to a cheap moralism to use as a political brickbat!