Comments on After You, Father

"The Galgamak vagina is 10 feet wide and lined with razor sharp teeth! We can't possibly be expected to have sex with that!"

hey, they just make the rules, they don't have to follow them.

And what is wrong with celibacy? Sure, the sex thing is out, so that has to be gotten over, but so are pick-up games, flirting games, hook-up games, "where will I stick this" games, and so are the "go home or is breakfast included" games. Monogamy is slightly better, but the games are still played, its just that the winner has already been pre-decided.

The worst part of it all is that if the Catholic Church were to just reverse position on homosexuality, birth control, abortion, female clergy, and other gender related issues, they would be a remarkable and beautiful ally for progressive causes. The companion statement about Iraq issued by the USCCB, for example, speaks to that, as does the church's position on the death penalty, foreign aid work, (most) human rights, and so on.

And from my experience, the idea that the Catholic Church is the only religion that has a problem with paedophilia/pederasty is *definitely* bogus. The only difference here is that the Catholic Church has a much more rigid hierarchy that can be held to account for the impropriety.

My hometown, for example, had a rather messy incident where a married UCC minister was accused of sexual impropriety with members of the congregation, and was later charged with child molestation. However, the results were the same as with the cases in the Catholic Church: the bastard was reassigned, and the whole case was swept under the rug. He even managed to beat the child molestation charge, despite the fact that some of his former clergy members were probably covering for him to keep his ass out of prison.

But in the end, it didn't matter that the UCC had a more liberal bent, or that they allowed married clergy and now advocate for gay marriage. If you are a sick and twisted fuck in a position of power over people (child or adult), you'll abuse that power for your own satisfaction, and the people above you have a vested interest in keeping negative publicity under wraps.

Hey Dan,

You don't have to be JUST catholic or protestant. The Episcopals consider themselves small-c catholic AND protestant. Part of tracing the Church of England back to when St Augustine of Canterbury landed in 597... :)

I appreciate the fact that US Catholics are more independently minded than most other religious folks, but why would any self respecting gay man or lesbian ever want to be Catholic?

The Catholic Church has absolutely nothing to offer us, other than hypocrisy, lies, soft hatred (we love you but you're disordered) and condemnation of course. It’s just so self destructive.

If you’re determined to be religious, why not go with MCC, UCC or Episcopalian?

I think the church may be making a slow three-point turn on this issue, and right now we're seeing them at that awkward moment where they're crosswise to traffic with their front wheels against the curb.

Hi, everyone. Thanks to Mr. Savage's excellent commentary, doesn anyone need to know why I'm an ex-Catholic who considers himself an intellectual free agent? And I agree with Arthur C. Clark: Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World should be required reading in all high schools and colleges. It's a brilliant treatise on religious and pseudoscientific tomfoolery.

A note to Father Ted who complained about all the "games" that go along with sex: the Christian religion gave us the rules for those self same “games”. They are the ones who taught us the slave mentality and it is the powerless person who uses manipulation to gain their desires.
So be celibate if you want to. Why not? Just don’t go pushing it on me.