Saturday Morning Snark

Somewhere in California, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are howling with laughter:

And that differs from these.....how?

Show Tune Hipsters

The Future of Broadway

There's a very strange thing happening in pop culture these days, and it has to do with show tunes.

Show Tunes. The very phrase has been associated with, variously, little old ladies with blue hair, tourists from Kansas, and Teh Gay. And yet, we're now finding that there is a Vast Show Tune Underground, a club that surely meets in dark basements in bad parts of town, serving up bad liquor and requiring a password for enter. Its members are neither little old ladies with blue hair, nor tourists from Kansas, nor gay men. In fact, they are some of the most unlikely people you'd ever think would be aficionados of the Songbook of the American Theatre. For one thing, they're straight guys. For another, they're "guy-guys", with sophomoric, Apatowan senses of humor which lean towards jokes about getting high and jerking off, about farts and anal probes and the reality that "clitoris" is a funny-sounding word. And yeah, there's a fair amount of undercurrent of homophobia to what they do, which is why they are as rich as Croesus and is no doubt their way of overcompensating for the fact that these guys really, really love show tunes.

Seth MacFarlane, who created Family Guy, a show that uses any excuse to include a musical number (preferably a big production number), has often revealed in interviews his love of show tunes and the American songbook. The CD Family Guy Live in Vegas, a collaboration with composer Walter Murphy, gave a taste of what MacFarlane's amazing pipes can do. But MacFarlane takes his American songbook as seriously as Michael Feinstein does, and in September will release Music Is Better Than Words, a compilation of "hidden gems" from musicals of the 1940's and 1950's. But because Mac Farlane's Broadway sensiblity is so tied up in his own voice, and because he's busy producing three hit TV shows and doing live performances, a move to Broadway is unlikely. Still, given the demographic of his audience, a guy with the snark cred of Seth MacFarlane can do a great deal to open the eyes of the youth demographic to the emerging Broadway that is not just for bluehairs anymore.

The bluehairs are the reason for the hue and cry over the years about the impending Death of Broadway, about where the next generation of audiences is going to come from when everyone who could possibly stand to sit through Andrew Lloyd Webber bombasts has already seen them and started to die off. All the hoopla about Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark, at least before it became a national joke, was about keeping the same young audiences in the theatre that made Avenue Q a hit and a Tony Award winner in 2003-2004 -- one with staying power that is still playing off-Broadway.

The plethora of jukebox musicals that dot the theatre district like Starbucks these days aren't going to do it. The songs in these shows, such as Jersey Boys, Million Dollar Quartet, and Baby It's You, have no resonance for younger audiences. They're for the neo-bluehairs that constitute the first wave of baby boomers. Perhaps this group has enough disposable income to keep Broadway going all by themselves, because there's yet another one coming: Natural Woman, based on the life and music of Carole King. It's all enough to make me rue the fact that Leader Of The Pack opened in 1984, before the jukebox musical became a cheap way to make money. Frank Rich hated it, but I actually SAW Leader Of The Pack and was rewarded by some great belting by Annie Golden and a rendition of "River Deep Mountain High" by the great Darlene Love that turned the Ambassador Theatre into the First Church of Awesome Gospel. "Leader" ran for only 120 performances, which should give the producers of Natural Woman pause, Jersey Boys notwithstanding. The jukebox musical set is starting to retire, and doesn't have a whole lot of money for Broadway. There's only so many ways you can slice that bologna before it starts to go bad. At some point you have to bring in new audiences.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that snark sells. Yes, musicals like South Pacific are classics, but among the high school drama club set from whence new audiences come, the standard bearer is the ubiquitous Guys and Dolls -- to this day the gold standard of marriage of wit and music. The wit is out there; the question was from whence the music would come.

And it's coming from some highly unlikely places.

Anyone who's followed Green Day over the years knows that even back in the Dookie days, it was clear that while Billie Joe Armstrong may have been a snotty punk pothead, he had a gift for ditties -- 3 minute pop songs filled with angst, rage, and yes, snark. We knew that Billie Joe was prolific, and we knew that his brand of 3-chord punk had those damnedly catchy pop hooks that left "Walking Contradiction" playing over and over in your head for three days. What we didn't know, is for all these years, what Billie Joe was writing was show tunes. What we learned when American Idiot hit Broadway was just how glorious some of those songs are when performed by people who can actually sing.

For example, here's "Whatshername" performed by Green Day:

...and by the original Broadway cast:

American Idiot on Broadway was a vibrant, exciting show with a great cast, hampered by a weak book, but it still played a respectable 422 performances, closing this year on April 24. And now we know that while Billie Joe Armstrong became a rock star writing songs about getting teenaged rage, there's something else brewing there -- a knowledge and feel for the conventions of theatre that in the aftermath of American Idiot have no doubt had him thinking he might at some point write something specifically for Broadway.

Sort of like what Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done with The Book of Mormon. Back in February, I started receiving postcards for bargain preview seats for this show. I knew that these two guys combined with Bobby Lopez, who along with Jeff Marx wrote the hilarious, yet still tinkly songs for Avenue Q, would produce a winner. But Mr. Brilliant had been jettisoned from his employer a month before, and I couldn't justify spending even $49 a head for a show.

Of course now I'm kicking myself, now that Book has become a monster hit, and is expected to pick up a wheelbarrow of Tony Awards this weekend. Who would have thought that the same people who fifteen years ago created a cartoon that started with a foul-mouthed character getting anally probed by space aliens via an expanding satellite dish would become the Toast of Broadway? But even if you can't get tickets until sometime in 2016 (which is what seems to be the case; just try looking for tickets during the time period that Telecharge allow you to enter and if you want to really get sick, try looking for tickets at StubHub), you should run out and buy the original cats recording.

Here's composer Bobby Lopez on this week's Studio 360 on NPR (full interview link) playing the opening to "I Believe", which I've read will be the song performed on the awards show tonight. It wouldn't have been my choice, but this song is a small miracle -- it demonstrates the full goofiness of some of the Mormon precepts, and yet for one brief moment, it makes you believe them too.

Parker and Stone may be getting all the press, but for my money, it's Bobby Lopez, likely to be two-for-two by the end of this weekend, who is the unsung hero of this production -- a Frank Loesser for a new generation.

Best. Blog. Comment. Ever.

Comment to this article indicating that YHWH was once worshipped side-by-side with a fertility goddess names Asherah (known in other traditions as Ishtar). The article refers to Asherah as "God's wife".

Hi, God's wife here. Yes, I exist and let me tell you, it's a hard life, looking after the old man. For one thing he moves in mysterious ways, which might sound romantic but it can get pretty irritating during the course of eternity. I'm like, still still and eat your lunch, can't you? But it's been better in the last couple of thousand years because his only son has been sitting on his right hand, which restricts his mobility a little. But I wish he'd pay more attention to me. Uh oh, gotta go. He was playing with one of his planets again and he's completely trashed part of it. Now he's going to be depressed and start bitching about the atheists and how no one worships him the way they did in the old days, with the sacrifices and the burnt offerings. Boy, he loved those burnt offerings. I tell him, make your own burnt offerings already, Mr omnipotent smarty-pants, but he says it's not the same as when a bunch of ignorant, terrified humans do it. No fun. And he's a jealous God, too, but don't get me started on that. Okay, can't stay here gabbing all day. A woman's work is never done.

Is willful ignorance part of the Christian tradition?

It looks that way, based on the results of a new Pew research poll:

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Theresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice.

The researchers said that the questionnaire was designed to represent a breadth of knowledge about religion, but was not intended to be regarded as a list of the most essential facts about the subject. Most of the questions were easy, but a few were difficult enough to discern which respondents were highly knowledgeable.

On questions about the Bible and Christianity, the groups that answered the most right were Mormons and white evangelical Protestants.

On questions about world religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, the groups that did the best were atheists, agnostics and Jews.

[snip]

Clergy members who are concerned that their congregants know little about the essentials of their own faith will no doubt be appalled by some of these findings:

¶ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

¶ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

¶ Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Theresa was Roman Catholic.

For the record, I knew that Maimonides was Jewish. Of course, Maimonides isn't central to Judaism in the way that Martin Luther is to Protestantism or transubstantiation is to the Roman Catholic mass. (And no, I didn't learn that word from Tom Lehrer.)

But reading the results of this poll, it's easy to see how in this country, where the so-called religious have spent the last thirty years LITERALLY acting all holier-than-thou, where they think Barack Obama is a Muslim even they don't know jack about what being a Muslim even is, we get people believing that there's a plot to enforce shari'a law on all Americans, that if evolution were true monkeys would be turning into humans before our very eyes, and that Jesus is literally going to lift people out of their GMC trucks and lift them up to that giant sofa in the sky, where they'll get to drink beer and scarf down wings while watching the unconverted Jews and other heathen endure the Tribulations.

I have no beef with just about anything want to believe in order to get through what is, as Mr. Brilliant says, this God-forsaken level of reality. But if you're going to believe something, at least have the decency to get some knowledge about what your own belief system is. And remember that faith is just that -- faith. It's not fact, it's not science, and it ends at the tip of your own nose.

OK, can we stop pretending that we're friends with these guys now?

For the last twenty years, we've heard all kinds of conciliatory crap towards Jews coming out of the Vatican. It was all horsepuckey, of course, no matter how much Rabbi Marc Gelman wanted to believe it. They believe we killed Christ, they've always believed we killed Christ, and when he comes back, we'll get him again!

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Now I'm not one of those people who sees anti-Semitism around every corner, like Woody Allen in Annie Hall talking about someone saying "Jew eat?". But all this nicey-nice stuff from the Vatican always struck me as creepy. I knew the shiv was there at the ready, and so it is:

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: "They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

He's not all wrong. We do NOT want their church. Even those of us who are nonobservant as Jews want no part of a church that throughout its history has stood for persecution of heretics, the amassing of power, the cynical abuse of mankind's quest for meaning, and harbors and protects pedophiles.

If you believe that Y'shua of Nazareth actually existed, it doesn't matter whether you believe he was divine or just a cool guy with a message that we should all be nice to each other. The fact of the matter is that the deeply corrupt organization housed in Italy and populated by creepy old men does their messiah no service and pays him no tribute.

New Rule: A pedophile protection racket shall have no say over U.S. policy

None. And yes, Bart Stupak, I'm talking about YOUR church:

Catholic priest who has been criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota six years ago is still working in his home diocese in India despite warnings to the Vatican from an American bishop that the priest continued to pose a risk to children, according to church documents made public on Monday.

The documents show that the American bishop warned the Vatican that the priest was accused of molesting two teenage girls whose trust he gained by promising to discuss their interest in becoming nuns.

A county attorney in Minnesota is seeking to extradite the priest from India in a criminal case that involves one of the girls, who said the priest had forced her to perform oral sex and had threatened her and her family.

The case took place during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently come under fire for his role in cases of sexually abusive priests in Germany and Wisconsin.

The case was handled after the Vatican clarified and streamlined its procedures in 2001 to respond to accusations of sexual abuse by priests. In the midst of a growing scandal, the Vatican has sought to defend the pope by pointing out that he was both an architect and a promoter of these procedures.

But the Vatican also says it defers to local bishops to decide how to treat accused priests, leaving it exposed to criticism that the church is not doing enough to rein in sexually abusive priests.

In 2006, the Vatican recommended that the priest simply be monitored, a document shows. A lawyer for the Holy See said in a statement that the Vatican had recommended that the priest be defrocked, but that canon law specifies that the decision rests with the local bishop. The bishop in India sentenced the priest to a year of prayer in a monastery rather than seeking his removal from the priesthood, according to documents and interviews.

It's time to bring the current head of this ring to justice.

And you think YOU'RE living in an existential hell

Imagine the plight of Raj Patel, who thought he was just appearing on The Colbert Report to hawk his new book about the financial crisis. But a funny thing happened on the way to the New York Times Bestseller list:

I can sort of understand worshipping Patel. After all, he's obviously brilliant, and he's gorgeous, and he's passionate about his work. But these days, Raj Patel, who just wants to be an activist and author, finds himself besieged by people who refuse to accept his denial that he's the messiah:

What started as an oddity kept snowballing until suddenly, in the middle of his book tour and awaiting the arrival of his first child, Patel was inundated by questions, messages of support and even threats. The influx was so heavy, in fact, that he put up a statement on his website referencing Monty Python's Life of Brian and categorically stating that he was not Maitreya.

Instead of settling the issue, however, his denial merely fanned the flames for some believers. In a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied. It seemed like there was nothing to convince them.

"It's the kind of paradox that's inescapable," he said, with a grim humour. "There's very little chance or point trying to dig out of it."

There are many elements of his life that tick the prophetic checklist of his worshippers: a flight from India to the UK as a child, growing up in London, a slight stutter, and appearances on TV. But it is his work that puts him most directly in the frame and causes him the most anguish – the very things the followers of Share believe will indicate that their new messiah has arrived.

Patel's career – spent at Oxford, LSE, the World Bank and with thinktank Food First – has been spent trying to understand the inequalities and problems caused by free market economics, particularly as it relates to the developing world.

His first book, Stuffed and Starved, rips through the problems in global food production and examines how the free market has worked to keep millions hungry (Naomi Klein called it dazzling, while the Guardian's Felicity Lawrence said it was "an impassioned call to action"). The Value of Nothing, meanwhile, draws on the economic collapse to look at how we might fix the system and improve life for billions of people around the globe.

While his goal appears to match Share's vision of worldwide harmony, he says the underlying assumptions it makes are wrong – and possibly even dangerous.

"What I'm arguing in the book is precisely the opposite of the Maitreya: what we need is various kinds of rebellion and transformations about how private property works," he said.

"I don't think a messiah figure is going to be a terribly good launching point for the kinds of politics I'm talking about – for someone who has very strong anarchist sympathies, this has some fairly deep contradictions in it."

To say Patel – with his academic air, stammer and grey-flecked hair – is a reluctant saviour is an understatement. In fact, he rejects the entire notion of saviours. If there is one thing he has learned from his work as an activist in countries such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, it is that there are no easy answers.

"People are very ready to abdicate responsibility and have it shovelled on to someone else's shoulders," he said. "You saw that with Obama most spectacularly, but whenever there's going to be someone who's just going to fix it for you, it's a very attractive story. It's in every mythological structure."

Always the academic.

Patel's rejection of his status as a deity does not seem to have killed off interest from Share's members. Indeed, the situation has invaded his everyday life, such as when two devotees travelled from Detroit – some 2,400 miles away – just to hear him give a short public talk.

"They were really nice people, not in your face, really straightforward – these people do not look like fanatics," he says. "I gave the talk, and they hung around at the end and we had a chat."

It was only then that the pair revealed that they were followers of Creme's teachings.

Patel said: "They said they thought I was the Maitreya … they also said I had appeared in their dreams. I said: 'I'm really flattered that you came all the way here, but it breaks my heart that you came all this way and spent all this money to meet someone who isn't who you think he is.'

"It made me really depressed, actually. That evening I was really down."

While he struggles to cope with this unwanted anointment, his friends and family are more tickled by the situation.

"They think it's hilarious," he said. "My parents came to visit recently, and they brought clothes that said 'he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy'. To them, it's just amusing."

As it is to us...and I'm sure to the members of Monty Python as well. Life sometimes imitates art, but it's not every day that said art is The Life of Brian (Note: Video contains a quick shot of carrot 'n' onions and may not be work-safe):

"He is no man of God!"

Michelangelo Signorile had a profoundly spiritual moment over 20 years ago about Josef Cardinal Ratzinger. If this doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, nothing else will:

Ratzinger then took the podium and began to speak. As soon as he finished his first sentence, a group of about eight people to the left of the crowd leaped to their feet and began chanting "Stop the Inquisition!" They chanted feverishly and loudly, their voices echoing throughout the building. The entire room was fixated on them. Activists suddenly appeared in the back of the church and began giving out fliers explaining the action. Two men on the other side of the room jumped up and, pointing at Ratzinger, began to scream, "Antichrist!" Another man jumped up, in one of the first few rows near the prelate, and yelled, "Nazi!" All over the church, angry people began to shout down the protesters who were near them; chaotic yelling matches broke out.

It was electrifying. Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protesters and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon I broke into a sweat, overcome by heat, my face turning red as anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church -- everyone around me -- had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called "faggot" in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I'd endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid.

I looked at Cardinal O’Connor, who had buried his head in his hands, and I recognized the man sitting next to him. It was O’Connor’s spokesman and right-hand man, Father Finn, who had been the dean of students back at my all-boys high school, Monsignor Farrell on Staten Island. A vivid scene flashed in front of my eyes: The horrible day when I was in the principal’s office talking to the principal, the guidance counselor, and the dean. It was the day they threw me out, after I’d gotten in one too many fist fights with boys who’d labeled me a fag, after I’d had sex with several guys (who then tried to distance themselves by targeting me). I looked back at Ratzinger, my eyes burning; a powerful surge went through my body. The shouting had subsided a bit because some of the brothers had gotten in front of the room to calm the crowd. The police had arrived and were carting away protesters.
Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted:

"He is no man of God!"

The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued:

"He is no man of God -- he is the Devil!"

Sounds like some greater power spoke to Michael of the Angels that day. People should have listened.

(h/t Swopa)

Blogrolling in our Time

If it seems like I'm harping on Catholics lately, it's not true. What I'm harping on is the institution of the Church...because I will not defend an organization that harbors and excuses sex criminals. You see, claims of theological truth and doctrinal infallibility don't impress me. If this institution speaks to you emotionally and theologically, have at it. Whatever gets you through this level of reality.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to leave the Vatican alone. And so, io in that vein, let me welcome The Gospel According to Hate to the blogroll. Because in adding blogs like this and like City of Angels, I'm adding people who qualify to write about such things under the It's OK to Knock Your Own Team rule.

Blogrolling in our time

Give a big, warm, brilliant welcome to City of Angels, where Kay Ebeling documents the pedophile protection ring known as "The Vatican."

Betty Friedan is responsible for Catholic Church pedophiles? WTF???

It's interesting to watch just how terrified and timid the mainstream media has been about covering the massive and spreading sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

Look, I understand how difficult it is to separate out the Vatican from the faithful. This more than any other religion is inextricably linked with a hierarchy of men that is as much corporation as church, which makes it difficult to bring the "hate the sin, love the sinner" doctrine to bear. I know many, many Catholics, of varying degrees of faith. Most of them by and large buy the idea of the Pope as a kind of direct conduit to God, though the Vatican doesn't play all that much of a role in their day-to-day faith. I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to have the very foundation of what you have been told since childhood is Absolute Truth be exposed as what is essentially a criminal enterprise at this point.

But in its attempts to deal with what many people thought after Pope Ratzi ascended in 2005 was in the past, the Vatican is reaching a level of crazy that is unlikely to fly in an era where we no longer burn witches:

When you're one of the most powerful institutions in the world and you've got an escalating series of sex abuse scandals erupting in such far-flung locales as Ireland,  Germany, Brazil and beyond on a near daily basis, how do you even begin to do damage control? If you're the Catholic Church, maybe you say you're going to investigate. You issue a few letters. And then just to cover all your bases, you do a little Satan blaming. In a bold and arguably wack move, the Vatican's normally press-shy exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth has been granting interviews left and right lately, and they are a treasure trove of WTF moments.

You say you hadn't been aware the Vatican even had an official exorcist? Thought that stuff was just for Linda Blair movies? That's likely because, prior to last week, the Vatican had permitted its exorcist to grant one interview in the entire last century. Now, suddenly he's doing the rounds like he's got a new rom-com with Gerard Butler opening Friday.

Speaking to La Republica last week, Amorth, who in fact does have a new book, "Memoirs of an Exorcist," to shill, said, "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." A few days later, he told the UK Times, "All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including pedophilia." He also added that contemporary culture has "given in to the Evil One. You see it in the lack of faith, the empty churches, the collapse of the family. Compare the world of today to when I was a boy in Modena: families and parish communities were strong, women did not go out to work."

I keep hearkening back to this Kevin Smithian notion of God and Satan playing Skee-Ball for giant stuffed animals down in Keansburg, New Jersey, and Satan getting bonus points for getting Christians to fall to temptation. We've seen no end to the blaming of
The Horned One for everything from infidelity to, well, child sex abuse. As someone who lives a relatively moral life without a Great White Punitive Alpha Male, I don't understand this at all. But the idea that child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and gay prositution rings run out of the Vatican are the fault of NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE listening to what these people have to say and of women having jobs, ought to destroy whatever credibility this institution has left.

As is often the case these days, the timidity of the media in exposing the criminal enterprise that is the Church hierarchy is not shared by what is becoming the last bastion of investigative journalism in the country: comedians:

And Chris Hitchens (but you already knew that):

Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing—indeed endless—scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made "to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse." He stupidly went on to say that "those efforts have failed."

He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. (One of the sanctified voters in that "election" was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who had already found the jurisdiction of Massachusetts a bit too warm for his liking.)

There are two separate but related matters here: First, the individual responsibility of the pope in one instance of this moral nightmare and, second, his more general and institutional responsibility for the wider lawbreaking and for the shame and disgrace that goes with it. The first story is easily told, and it is not denied by anybody. In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked, and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing "abuse"?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for "therapy" by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger's deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to "pastoral" work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.

It is, of course, claimed, and it will no doubt later be partially un-claimed, that Ratzinger himself knew nothing of this second outrage. I quote, here, from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former employee of the Vatican Embassy in Washington and an early critic of the Catholic Church's sloth in responding to child-rape allegations. "Nonsense," he says. "Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He's the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he's trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope."

This is common or garden stuff, very familiar to American and Australian and Irish Catholics whose children's rape and torture, and the cover-up of same by the tactic of moving rapists and torturers from parish to parish, has been painstakingly and comprehensively exposed. It's on a level with the recent belated admission by the pope's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, that while he knew nothing about sexual assault at the choir school he ran between 1964 and 1994, now that he remembers it, he is sorry for his practice of slapping the boys around.

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

Not content with shielding its own priests from the law, Ratzinger's office even wrote its own private statute of limitations. The church's jurisdiction, claimed Ratzinger, "begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18^th year of age" and then lasts for 10 more years. Daniel Shea, the attorney for two victims who sued Ratzinger and a church in Texas, correctly describes that latter stipulation as an obstruction of justice. "You can't investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10, the priest will get away with it."

Look, I have no problem with anyone needing some kind of belief system in an attempt to make life make sense, especially in these days when I expect frogs to come pouring out of the skies any day now. But given the huge role that people like Bart Stupak have given the Catholic Church in writing legislation that will affect all of us, I think it's not unreasonable for those of us who do not regard these guys as having a direct conduit to God to point out just how little moral authority they have.

Why are the media not touching this story?

Look, I realize that ultimately this is about the faith of millions of people. I recognize that Roman Catholicism as a religion speaks to a great many people. I know that there are a lot of people who hold with papal infallibility; perhaps not most American Catholics, many of whom pick and choose from the menu, but many. I also understand that when you're talking about religion, you have to step carefully.

But I'm not talking about Catholic doctrine here, or if I am, it extends only to the doctrine of papal infallibility. But I'm sorry, if your religion requires that you hold a man who aided and abettted the sexual abuse of children as infallible, perhaps it's time to become an Episcopalian:

The Pope was drawn directly into the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal last night as news emerged of his part in a decision to send a paedophile priest for therapy. The cleric went on to reoffend and was convicted of child abuse but continues to work as a priest in Upper Bavaria.

The priest was sent from Essen to Munich for therapy in 1980 when he was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The archdiocese confirmed that the Pope, who was then a cardinal, had approved a decision to accommodate the priest in a rectory while the therapy took place.

The priest, identified only as H, was subsequently convicted of sexually abusing minors after he was moved to pastoral work in nearby Grafing. In 1986 he was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence and fined DM 4,000 (£1,800 today). There have been no formal charges against him since.

The church has been accused of a cover-up after at least 170 allegations of child abuse by German Catholic priests. The scandal broke in January but the claims, which continue to emerge, span three decades. Critics say that priests were redeployed to other parishes rather than dismissed when they were found to be abusing children.

Again and again and again and again. Case after case after case -- only this time in involves this particular pope directly.

Fifty years ago a presidential candidate had to assure voters that were he elected, the Pope would not be making policy. It's a step forward that such steps are no longer required, but for the last six months, a Catholic Senator has been almost single-handedly blocking health care reform in this country; a man who is willing to deny health care to actual children over the Church doctrine on abortion. We are not a Roman Catholic nation, whether Bart Stupak likes it or not, and his lies about abortion funding serve neither him, nor the country, nor the Church. (Well, maybe they serve the interests of the Church.)

But while the media are willing to be all Eric Massa, all the time, because it is a salacious story, they are unwilling to cover this reality of systematic beatings and sexual abuse of children in monasteries BECAUSE IT WILL OFFEND PEOPLE? On what altar are we sacrificing children to the interests of a corrupt hierarchy masquerading as the keepers of the religious flame? Does it serve Christ to protect pedophiles while children suffer a lifetime of shame and psychological damage? Are the media there to serve the Vatican or to inform? Why does the Vatican get a free pass on activities that would get anyone else thrown in prison for a long, long time?

Oh, well, that explains everything

Why I cannot take the institution of the Catholic Church seriously:

CHILD sex scandals rocking the Catholic Church are proof of the Devil living in the Vatican, the Pope's chief exorcist claims.

Father Gabriel Amorth, 84, who has carried out more than 70,000 exorcisms in 50 years, said that Pope Benedict "fully agreed" with him in "casting out evil".

In the last few months, the Catholic Church have been rocked by a series of sex scandals in Ireland, Holland and, most recently, Germany.

Even the Pope's brother, Father Georg Ratzinger, has admitted he hit choir boys.

Italian priest Fr Amorth said: "His Holiness fully believes in casting out evil.

"The Devil lives in the Vatican. Naturally it's difficult to find proof but the true consequences are visible.

Does anyone actually take this seriously, that there is no such thing as free will, or themaking of choices -- that God and Satan are playing Skee-Ball in Keansburg, NJ and Satan gets extra bonus points and a giant stuffed tiger for making Christians do bad things?

I really miss Flip Wilson at moments like this:

Why are we letting these people dictate what's in health care reform?

I realize that Bart Stupak thinks that it's perfectly OK if actual, real, live babies and children die because they can't get health care as long as those dirty sluts can't get abortions on the Federal dime. But there's also the fact that the Catholic Church has made clear that it wants to dictate whether women's health services are covered under any federal health care reform package.

Why is official Washington treating these people as if they have any kind of moral authority? Their obsession with the dispensability of women as anything more than sin-creating breeding machines ought to in and of itself be enough for no one to take them seriously. But since it's all about sex to these people, perhaps they ought to clean out their own house first:

The Vatican is facing allegations that one of Pope Benedict's ceremonial ushers, as well as a member of the Vatican choir, were involved in a gay prostitution ring.

"The latest shadow on the church's image," reports CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth, "comes from leaked police reports (on) wiretaps in a separate corruption case. The Vatican wasn't a target, but it's taken a hit."

The recordings, according to Italian press, reveal Angelo Balducci, an Italian executive who's been a Gentleman of his Holiness -- the elite group of black-suited men who serve the pope in unpaid roles as ushers -- negotiating with the 29-year-olf Nigerian Vatican choir member for the services of male prostitutes, as part of the larger prostitution ring.

Balducci is under arrest.

The Vatican reportedly has cut ties to both men but, notes Roth, "bad publicity over sex and sexual abuse charges still confronts the church.

"Irish bishops were called to Rome in february after Benedict expressed outrage over a pedophilia scandal in their country. A prominent Catholic religious order countered new corruption charges in Mexico this week over sex and money. And the pope's old diocese figures in some of the newest sexual abuse claims in Germany."

"We're just scratching the surface here," says CBS News consultant Father Thomas Williams. "There's definitely more to come. We only know of these two men connected with the Vatican in some way, but obviously, they're talking about a ring, and a ring means definitely more people involved. So, I'm sure more will be coming out in the days to come."

Shorter Ross Douthat: Bring Back Self-Flagellation!!

Funny how a columnist who comes from the side of the fence that rails against elites, longs for the days when profound spiritual experience was the exclusive province against them:

By making mysticism more democratic, we’ve also made it more bourgeois, more comfortable, and more dilettantish. It’s become something we pursue as a complement to an upwardly mobile existence, rather than a radical alternative to the ladder of success. Going to yoga classes isn’t the same thing as becoming a yogi; spending a week in a retreat center doesn’t make me Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux. Our kind of mysticism is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.

What’s more, it’s possible that our horizons have become too broad, and that real spiritual breakthroughs require a kind of narrowing — the decision to pick a path and stick with it, rather than hopscotching around in search of a synthesis that “works for me.” The great mystics of the past were often committed to a particular tradition and community, and bound by the rules (and often the physical confines) of a specific religious institution. Without these kind of strictures and commitments, Johnson argues, mysticism drifts easily into a kind of solipsism: “Kabbalism apart from Torah-observance is playacting; Sufism disconnected from Shariah is vague theosophy; and Christian mysticism that finds no center in the Eucharist or the Passion of Christ drifts into a form of self-grooming.”

Most religious believers will never be great mystics, of course, and the American way of faith is kinder than many earlier eras to those of us who won’t. But maybe it’s become too kind, and too accommodating. Even ordinary belief — the kind that seeks epiphanies between deadlines, and struggles even with the meager self-discipline required to get through Lent — depends on extraordinary examples, whether they’re embedded in our communities or cloistered in the great silence of a monastery. Without them, faith can become just another form of worldliness, therapeutic rather than transcendent, and shorn of any claim to stand in judgment over our everyday choices and concerns.

Maybe getting through Lent is a struggle because deep down, people don't see giving up Hershey bars as ultimately meaning anything. As for a faith that stands in judgment, I have to wonder about someone who requires the supernatural in order to take the moral fork in the road when such choices come up. I always use the pepper-in-the-shopping-cart analogy: When you get into the parking lot at the supermarket, and you see a bell pepper wedged between the top basked and the rest of the cart that both you and the cashier missed, do you just take it, leave it in the cart, or go in and pay for it? I'm not a Christian, I don't really practice any religion, and I always go in and pay for it. BECAUSE IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

Why is that so difficult that people need to create a punitive imaginary figure in order to do it?

Saturday Linkasaurus

This juxtaposition struck me as funny. Click through and then stick icepick into forehead.

Digby.

Driftglass.

Yup. Bill Maher is right.

UPDATE: Then of course there are realms of Stoopid that most of us can't even fathom.

Leave it to a pope who's an ex-brownshirt to decide that Pope Pius XII should be a saint

Sainthood just ain't what it used to be, now that they let just anyone in. Former Nazi brownshirt Pope Benedict has decided that the predecessor who looked the other way while six million Jews and millions of others were slaughtered by the Nazis should be elevated to sainthood:

Jewish leaders from around the world expressed their outrage today after the Pope opened the way for his controversial wartime predecessor to be made a saint, with some calling the possible beatification of Pius XII as "inopportune and premature".

Benedict signed a decree last Saturday on the virtues of Pius, who has been criticised for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust. The decree means he can be beatified once a miracle attributed to him has been recognised.

Beatification is the first major step towards sainthood. But Benedict, who has long admired Pius, continues to draw fire for ignoring concerns over the controversial pontiff.

Among those to criticise him was the World Jewish Congress, whose president, Ronald Lauder, said: "As long as the archives about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions ‑ or inaction ‑ concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature.

"While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic church to decide on whom religious honours are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pius XII's political role during world war two which should not be ignored."

He called on the Vatican to immediately open the files on the controversial figure. "Given the importance of good relations between Catholics and the Jews, and following the difficult events of the past year, it would be appreciated if the Vatican showed more sensitivity on this matter," he added, referring to Benedict's rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying cleric, Richard Williamson.

The incident sparked worldwide condemnation from prominent Jewish groups and individuals and placed an additional strain on interfaith relations, which were already under pressure after the pope issued an edict permitting a prayer that called for the conversion of Jews.

In France, the country's chief rabbi urged the Vatican to abandon its mission to beatify Pius. Gilles Bernheim said: "Given Pius XII's silence during and after the Shoah [Holocaust], I don't want to believe that Catholics see in Pius XII an example of morality for humankind. I hope that the church will renounce this beatification plan and will thus honour its message and its values."

This pope and Pat Buchanan ought to get together for a beer. They have a lot in common.(h/t)

Mike Huckabee's record on freeing violent criminals because Jesus told him to is worse than we knew

Gene Lyons:

During the former Baptist minister's decade as Arkansas governor, it appeared that no matter how heinous an inmate's crimes, all he had to do for a pardon was drop to his knees, praise Jesus and persuade some preacher known to Huckabee of his newfound holiness. "Everybody knows that Mike Huckabee makes up his mind what to do by what God tells him to do," said one minister who gained clemency for a prisoner serving 100 years for the strong-arm robbery of elderly neighbors.

Making the governor's personal acquaintance also seemed to help. Inmates competed to be assigned to do yard work at the Governor's Mansion. "If you do a good job raking the governor's leaves," Pulaski County (Little Rock) prosecutor Larry Jegley complained bitterly, "you can go free."

Altogether, Huckabee commuted 163 inmates' sentences, including a dozen murderers. Several have already ended up back in prison. Indeed, given Huckabee's track record, Maurice Clemmons probably won't be the last to earn notoriety. We must pray that he ends up being the worst. Only a strong public outcry in 2004 prevented the governor from freeing a Lonoke County killer who'd beaten, raped and run over a pregnant woman with his car, only to get religion in the penitentiary.

Look, there are those people who can only control their behavior when they have a religious framework within which to work. I don't understand needing a great white alpha male in the sky ready to smite you in order to behave because I don't need one, I can do it on my own. But hey -- whatever it takes. However, as I noted on Tuesday, deeds rather than faith ought to be the benchmark of whether someone has truly repented. And where Mike Huckabee is concerned, it's all about the professions of faith rather than tha actions of faith. But isn't this a logical outcome of a theology which states that nothing you do actually DO counts, it's all about whether you choose to believe a story? Isn't it only a matter of degree of heinousness that takes you on the road from being Mark Sanford to being Maurice Clemmons? Once you decide that it's about faith not deeds, isn't it one long continuum of amorality and criminality? And that's if you want to buy (as Huck did) that Clemmons' "conversion" was real, and not something being more a function of getting off on the old ultraviolence and tolchocking and getting to bed with one's wives' handmaidens, as Alex in A Clockwork Orange does.

How does one reconcile someone like Mike Huckabee, who's a rabid fetophile, wanting to free someone who beat, raped, and ran over a pregnant woman with his car? What about THAT fetus? Or does a man's conversion take priority over even a fetus?

It's time to stop letting the Catholic Church set American policy

We recently saw just how much influence the Catholic Church has over the creation of legislation in this country when the Stupak Amendment remained in the House health care legislation:

Behind-the-scenes lobbying, coupled with a grassroots mobilization of Catholic churches across the country, led the House Saturday to pass an amendment to its health-care bill barring anyone who receives a new tax credit from enrolling in a plan that covers abortion, a once-unthinkable event in Democrat-dominated Washington.

The restriction would still have to be accepted by the Senate, where it will likely face a tough fight. The issue could sink the larger health legislation if the chambers fail to reach agreement, or if any consensus language leads supporters to defect.

The House vote, and the central role played by one of the country's biggest religious denominations, stunned abortion-rights groups that had worked hard to elect Mr. Obama and expand Democratic congressional majorities. Activists on the left had thought social issues would take a back seat to economic concerns.

The bishops' success served as a reminder that Democrats' strategy over the past two election cycles of recruiting more conservative candidates to run in competitive House and Senate seats can have unwelcome policy consequences for liberals among the party's base. About 40 House Democrats are opposed to abortion rights.

The bishops have a history of political activism. In the 2004 presidential race, some bishops said they would refuse to grant communion to Democratic nominee John Kerry, a Catholic who favored abortion rights. In 2005, the bishops' conference backed efforts by then-President George W. Bush and Republican lawmakers to intervene in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case. But rarely has the church entered the fray with such decisive force.

"The Catholic bishops came in at the last minute and drew a line in the sand," said Laurie Rubiner, vice president for public policy at the abortion-rights advocacy group Planned Parenthood. "It's very hard to compete with that."

WHY is it hard to compete with that? A bunch of guys dress up in robes and funny hats and decide that they are God's emissaries and we're all supposed to accept them as holy men?

Yes, if you are Roman Catholic, the bishops are important. But why, in a country in which nonestablishment of religion is codified in the very documents on which it was founded, do Catholic bishops have this kind of influence? And they get a tax deduction on top of it, this church whose empire is headquartered in one of the wealthiest city-states in the world.

Just yesterday, the Catholic Church lobby helped defeat gay marriage legislation in New York. And a few weeks ago, the Washington DC archdiocese threatened to stop providing services to the poor if the city passed a law permitting gay marriage.

That the Catholic Church has any more credibility than any other lobby just because its hierarchy paints itself as being of God is preposterous in a diverse nation like ours. And that we buy into this business about Godliness from an organization with a history of protecting child molesters is even worse. Yesterday the Cardinal of the New York Diocese, Edward Egan, gave a deposition in a case that occurred when he was the Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut:

The deposition was in its fifth grueling hour. The lawyer and the witness had dueled over the meaning of common words, about whether an executive “supervises” or “administers,” about the difference between a lie and a failure to tell the truth.

Then the lawyer sprang his big question: You could have prevented someone from hurting people and you decided not to. Why?

The witness was Edward M. Egan, then the Roman Catholic bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. The question was about a priest who had been accused of sexually molesting children.

“I didn’t make a decision one way or the other,” said Bishop Egan, whom the lawyer suggested had failed to act quickly against the cleric. “I kept working on it until I resolved the decision.”

The exchange is one of hundreds recorded in a vast trove of documents the Diocese of Bridgeport made public on Tuesday after battling in court for seven years to keep them sealed. The archive — more than 12,000 pages of memos, church records and testimony — was gathered for 23 lawsuits, alleging sexual abuse of children by seven priests, that the diocese settled in 2002.

At the heart of it lies the bishop’s testimony, in two wide-ranging depositions from 1997 and 1999. Punctuated by legal parsing and frequent exasperation on both sides, transcripts of the videotaped sessions show the man who would become one of the church’s most prominent American leaders — the archbishop of New York, and a cardinal — as he navigated a budding scandal that still threatens the church’s finances and reputation.

Since 2002, when he moved to New York and nationwide attention focused on the church hierarchy’s handling of abuse complaints, Cardinal Egan has faced troubling accusations about his tenure in Bridgeport: that he allowed priests facing multiple sex abuse allegations to continue working; that he did not refer complaints to criminal authorities; and that he showed little interest in meeting with accusers.

[snip]

He sparred at one point over the difference between the supervisory and administrative duties; and at another point acknowledged that “media attention” to allegations of sexual abuse by priests had already become a serious problem for the church by 1988, when he arrived in Bridgeport, prompting him to take action. Soon after settling in, he said, he codified — in written form — the diocese’s “excellent policies” for handling sexual abuse complaints, which under previous bishops had been passed along by word of mouth.

Even then, Bishop Egan played down the importance of the action he had taken to stem a problem which, to him, was not a widespread one. At one point, when the deposition resumed in 1999, he stopped in his description of church policies to challenge the notion that any abuse had actually occurred.

“Incidentally,” he said, “these things don’t happen, and we are talking about ifs.”

“Forgive me, Father — Bishop,” replied one lawyer, Cindy Robinson. “But these things do happen because that’s the reason why we’re seated here today.”

She had been asking about two priests with long records of abuse allegations, whom Bishop Egan had sought to remove from the priesthood, though both continued working.

“These things happen in such small numbers,” the bishop said.

Bishop Egan was at his most combative when voicing his belief in the innocence of most accused priests, including one, the Rev. Raymond Pcolka, who was accused by 12 former parishioners of abuses involving oral and anal sex and beatings.

Nice, isn't it? And yet the organization that protects priests like this wants to have control over women's reproductive systems and whether same-sex people who love each other can be married. What kind of happy horseshit is this, anyway?

And in case William Donohue is having the vapors over this, let me be clear: I have no beef with people who practice Roman Catholicism as a religion. If the theology of this faith speaks to you, more power to you. There are aspects to Catholicism that I applaud, such as the ritual of confession, which to my mind is a far preferable framework for developing a moral code than the clean-slate "All you have to do is believe that Jesus died for you and you can do whatever you want" theology that seems to drive much of the Republican Party. I know Catholics of deep and abiding faith who DO help those less fortunate, and who DO turn to their religion for comfort and for whom this faith speaks to them. Whatever gets you through this often hideous level of reality, I say. But to defend the church hierarchy as somehow morally superior and worthy of a strong role in policymaking just doesn't hold water, given its record. Forget about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, we're only talking about what these men (and yes, it's all men) have done IN OUR LIFETIMES. I am not intolerant of religion, but I am intolerant of corruption and hypocrisy, ESPECIALLY that which is occurs while preaching moral superiority.

And when this church's hierarchy starts getting involved in policy, and has a role disprportionate to what it should in a nonetablishment government, and is characterized by a hypocrisy and corruption of this magnitude, it's time we stopped letting it beat our legislators into submission.

Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Amanda Marcotte, who is justifiably outraged that tucked away in the health care reform legislation is a provision that Christian Scientist "pay-for-prayer" is covered.

Money quote:

Can’t believe that they’re actually going to pass a bill where prayer is covered but abortion isn’t.