Entry 9:

Dear Erroll,

Mighty strong words dogging the Mother Church there, homey. God's gonna get you. I do believe that Catholics are among the most disgruntled of all religionists (and I say that as a furiously EX-Southern Baptist). Yet, you still want to be married as a Catholic and have your kids partake of the most basic, most sacred rituals. I wouldn't submit my kid to the full-immersion baptism I endured as a 10-year-old in a moldy church basement on a bet. "Foul spiritual corruption"? Priests who are "red-faced drunks"? Why not just walk away? (Or help that guy outside the Vatican Embassy here hold up those big old signs of his?) My husband and I would not allow the word "God" used in our wedding ceremony and looked hard for someone secular to marry us.

Remember the movie Agnes of God? I was particularly struck by Mother Superior Anne Bancroft (always deliciously human no matter who/what she plays) jacking up the lapsed Catholic-investigator-of-miracles Jane Fonda played and saying something like, "OK, sister. What is it that you're mad at God about? What's your beef?" The clear implication being that most lapsed Catholics still really believe, or want to, but have some particular grudge (feminism, class issues, historic oppression, the sinful opulence of the church's wealth). I think that's you, oh multilingual, Yale-educated sophisticate. You're mad at the God you wish you didn't believe in for the many loser followers of His we have to put up with day in and day out. Honoring the God they believe made the world in six days by insisting on ostentatiously praying to him before football games. Hard spiritual work, that. This school year in Virginia is the first to begin with a mandatory "moment of silence." Nyah, nyah! They want sex ed out of the schools (so important only parents should dispense the knowledge) but prayer in (so important any anonymous teacher should oversee it). I share your annoyance with His minions. He made roses and Jerry Falwell?

My lapse, however, is complete. I do not believe in any kind of god, and I emphatically reject the existence of heaven, hell, and religions that claim both infallibility and exclusivity. Are Catholics aware that they are a minority of believers on this planet? Everyone's wrong but them? The Borgias were popes for goodness' sake. The Abrahamic God may exist. I just refuse to deal with Him. Why do you keep trying if you're so sickened by it? Admit it--you believe. I guess you never said you didn't, did you? Speaking of idiotic followers--did you read about Gloria Steinem getting married? Charlotte Hays, former New York Post gossip columnist who now edits the conservative Independent Women'sForum said, "She was always sort of desperately eager to get married, poor thing. I think she just didn't lasso anybody until now." At 66. A former Playboy bunny who was never without a high-profile, high-living boyfriend. These conservative chicks, excuse me girls, crack me up. MEOW! That's the same way they try to smear Hillary Clinton for being (gasp!) a supportive wife. How dare she have put her enormous talents and potential on hold to follow around a man? And she calls herself a feminist! The miniskirts they're all so proud of must cut off the flow of blood to their brains that would make them understand that it's their silly and willfully perverse version of feminism that's the problem. Women get to choose. That's all feminism is. Marriage or not. Kids or not. Work or not. We don't have to choose a life alone to be feminists. Duh. Didja read the pretty conclusive proof that pre-Colombian Anasazi Indians (precursors of the Hopi, etc.) were cannibals? This debate has been raging for a while (The New Yorker did a big piece on it last year), but they seem to have the goods now. Indians activists are of course denying it. Something tells me the Vatican would find that "deficient." Some would just call it dinner.

Later,
Deb