Tag: Catholic

What will it take to please Catholic bishops? … Oh.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains that the only acceptable, fool-proof form of contraception is their Drew Carey glasses.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains that the only acceptable, fool-proof form of contraception is their Drew Carey glasses.

Seeking a compromise with Catholic leaders who object to providing insurance that covers birth control, President Barack Obama proposed an exemption for religious institutions. Instead of requiring religious-affiliated employers to pay for the same insurance coverage that every other employer has to, a third-party provider will cover the birth control costs.

Sounds reasonable, right? Of course not, if you’re a Catholic bishop.

The bishops wrote back on Thursday to say that the compromise does not go far enough, in that it does not “force sluts to pay for their whore pills.” The compromise also fails, in their opinion, to address the concerns of religious — yet not religiously-affiliated — employers like Hobby Lobby, whose CEO prefers to only provide the health coverage that he wants to his employees.

In other news: some guy quit his job — again — because the number 666 appeared on his W-2. And this is we don’t let religion determine U.S. policy.

These just in

The high school yearbook is a sacred tradition. Everyone signs each other’s books, and then no one ever looks at them ever again. But for that narrow window when people are signing, they are also flipping through the pages quickly out of sheer boredom. This is when pranks are found, like, say is someone exposes themselves.

At a Catholic School in Ontario, school officials are handing out stickers to remove nudity from the yearbook that no one noticed until nearly all of the books were handed out. (Canadian schools hand out yearbooks mid-way through the year because families need the fuel for fires in the cold winter months.) Someone on the school’s news team exposed his testicles in their group photo, and now, there’s going to be a sticker covering them.

How many times do schools have to learn? You never take your eyes off those journalism kids.

Love, love them don’t

The Vatican posted a new set of rules on its Web site today for how to handle pedophile cases. Apparently, the rule now is to report them to the police.

The quick response–a mere two weeks after reports started turning up in the news concerning Pope Benedict’s wild and heady days as a young archbishop–stunned critics as the Church normally embraces new ideas, like our heliocentric solar system, once every 500 years.

And just to drive the point home about forgiveness, the Vatican followed up this announcement with another one forgiving The Beatles.

Take it from Snee: Shut up and take it

My entreaties for peace fell on deaf ears (deaf eyes?) last week. I offered you people spaghetti and puppies, but look at us now: talking about potentially fighting in the streets if conditions are just right. We’re on the verge of a revolutionary civil world war, and it’s all because some people refuse to stop talking about threats.

Oh, did you think I was gonna take your side in this, Democrats and people who don’t like to be touched? No freakin’ way.

There are institutions to protect, practices to defend, and you have called down the thunder by daring to speak your opinion and effect change. And then, when we respond like a rational mob, you dare to accuse us of getting violent or angry?

Well. Conservative activists, Catholic apologists, school bullies and now I, Rick Snee, have had enough of your backtalk. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Shut up and take it

Correlation vs. causation and your priest

Congratulations on your recent adoption of a Catholic priest! Millions of people worldwide have made your choice in religious leader adoption, many because of the ease of care priests require:

  • Priests do not eat large meals. In fact, you can feed them the same bland diet of crackers and wine if you convince them there are USDA-graded chunks of Jesus inside.
  • Priests are not slaves to fashion. Their natural black coats should suffice in most environments. On fancy occasions, a hand-me-down smock should provide adequate body temperature regulation.
  • Priests do not require sexual stimulation. Preternaturally demure, priests do not require the comforts of wives or girlfriends.*

*There have been recent cases over the past 200 years of priests “expressing their sex organs” on children in the home. While experts are divided on what prompts this behavior by certain priests, Christoph Schönborn–the Archbishop of Vienna–believes that celibacy may “allow no outlet for priests’ sexual urges.”

Of course, this does not account for priests only exhibiting untoward advances to children. So, the jury’s still out on whether some priests become pedophiles or if some pedophiles become priests.

Just to be safe, you should always neuter your priest before introducing it into a home with small, easily-knocked-over children. It also saves the furniture from embarrassing stains.

Take it from Snee: Give up church for Lent

Let’s get this out of the way before I piss off only the Catholics: unless you’re dieting or a passive-aggressive schmuck, fasting is for losers. Almost every religion employs it at some point and tries to dismiss hunger pains and low blood pressure symptoms as holy euphoria.

But, anyone who’s bound to be offended knows why I’m talking about this today: it’s Who Gives a Rat’s Ash Wednesday. The media month for the Christian Super Bowl of Easter has opened, and adherents will give up things they love for Lent.

Some people give up booze, others smoking. Some women give up chocolate. In short, everyone gets a little bitchier, which simulates how angsty the Pharisees were to drive Jesus into the ground about this time. (Too soon?) Continue reading Take it from Snee: Give up church for Lent

Great, now the Internet’s unsafe for children

Pope Benedict XVI has asked Catholic ministers and priests to use the Internet to spread the gospel. Ben (and only we are allowed to call him that) cited the Church’s adoption of other media like books, television and weekly wine tastings as justification to moving online.

We can see a couple of flaws to this plan:

  1. The priests who are already Web savvy are also already on Chris Hansen’s watchlist.
  2. The priests who aren’t online will have trouble setting up blogs and Web sites since they never had children to do it for them. (This is also why the clergy doesn’t use DVRs and their clocks always read “88:88.”)

Still, we think His Holiness is on the right track and welcome him and his brethren to the ’90s.

If you love marriage so much …

Is it just us or does it seem odd that a group of unmarried freeloaders are considering themselves experts on marriage? It’s kind of like learning the ins and outs of scuba diving from people who are afraid to swim.

That hasn’t stopped the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from issuing a series of letters to explain their positions, again, on marriage, reproductive rights and cyborgs patients on life support.

We haven’t read these earth-shattering documents, but we’ll sum them up for you anyway:

“You got married, now have babies and don’t you stop until the corpse of your spouse is cold.”

(If the other week was bad for Scientology, how weird is it that the Catholics were next for this week?)

Catholic Light no more

He's certainly an eighth now.Groundskeepers at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle are reporting tremors.

At this point, the cause of the steady quake is unknown, but geologists have narrowed the focal point to somewhere around Henry VIII’s tomb.

They reported that the waves are undulating, which is characteristic of some sort of underground rolling motion.

When asked to comment, some Anglicans passed the blame on to homosexuals and women.

Military gets gay over soldiers’ feelings

OK, so there’s talk that President Obama might lift the ban on gays in the military — you know, because there definitely aren’t any gays or lesbians in the military right now.

The hold-up to lifting any such ban is that there are soldiers who will have a problem with it.

This, of course, makes perfect sense, since the military can’t order soldiers to serve with people they don’t like, right? We’re sure that racist soldiers don’t have to serve with openly black soldiers, right? And sexist soldiers don’t have to serve with women, correct?

Sure, there was that one time a Protestant soldier had to serve with Catholic and Jewish platoon mates, but we all had a laugh about that … eventually.

Fortunately, today’s military worries about the special interests of her soldiers, protecting them from the big scary gays, so they can serve in s–tholes like Iraq without fear (or understanding).