Boys Against Girls

While we don’t mean to criticize (OK, actually, we DO mean to criticize), it seems to us at “Holier Than Thou” that the Catholic Church has a double standard when dealing with the sexual activities of its male and female followers.

Take the following cases:

1) The Catholic St. Rose of Lima church in Brooklyn, NY, recently fired 26-year-old Michelle McCusker, saying she did not meet the church’s requirements that she “convey the teachings of the Catholic faith by…her words and actions.”

So, just what did McCusker do to get herself fired?

A) She is pregnant, but not married to the father of her unborn child.
B) She had an abortion after she and her husband discovered that her fetus had a terminal birth defect.
C) She and her husband started using birth control after she gave birth to her third baby in as many years.
D) She posed nude in Playboy magazine.


2) By contrast, while the Church was punishing McCusker for her less-than-holy sexual activities, it was rushing to the aid of the Rev. Thomas Graham, who was recently CONVICTED of sodomizing a boy in the rectory of St. Louis’s Old Cathedral, by posting his bail while Graham appeals his case.

Just how much Church (read: parishioner) money did the St. Louis Archdiocese post so they could keep a convicted child molester out on the streets?

A) $100,000
B) $200,000
C) $350,000
D) $500,000


3) Of course, the Church’s problems don’t end there. The former vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, Monsignor Dale Fushek, was recently arrested on a variety of sexually related charges that he allegedly performed under the guise of performing WHICH Sacrament?

A) Confession
B) Communion
C) Marriage
D) Last Rites


4) In an effort to head off future sexual abuse problems, the Church has taken a hard-line approach to gays in the priesthoods — or at least what it considers to be a hard-line approach. Of course, since the Church thinks that sexual orientation can be a “transitory problem, for example, as in the case of an unfinished adolescence” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean!), the guidelines might strike some of us who actually live in the real world as a little naive.

So, according to soon-to-be-release guidelines on recruiting new priests, how long must someone have “overcome” their homosexual tendencies before they can become ordained into the priesthood?

A) One year
B) Two years
C) Three years
D) Five years



ANSWERS

1) A: McCusker is pregnant and unmarried. “I don’t understand how a religion that prides itself on forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I’m pregnant and choose to have this baby,” she said.
2) D: The Church posted $500,000 bond to keep CONVICTED child molester Rev. Thomas Graham out on the street while his appeal is pending.
3) A: The Monsignor was arrested on charges that he fondled boys and young men and asked them questions about sex that he misrepresented as being part of confession.
4) C: Seminarians must have overcome their homosexual tendencies for three years become becoming ordained. And we’re certain that the Church will come up with a foolproof test to make sure those tendencies have been overcome!