Iceland Welcomes VP Mike Pence With Open Arms

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Harrowgate Tales - Excerpts

My latest on Kindle - Harrowgate Tales


Excerpts:


Parade in Kensington - Harrowgate Memorial Day Parade


...The biggest event annually in Harrowgate - Kensington was the Memorial Day Parade being that most parents of school aged children in the neighborhood and areas were veterans of WWII and Korea. Old males likely vets of WWI etc. I once marched in Memorial Day Parades in high school with the North(east) Catholic High marching band of which I played Sousaphone.

One performance I personally remember was in a parade that was in Port Richmond, we were bused to different locations that day in a P.T.C. chartered bus. There I saw two amazing things. An old man of about ninety, skinny and tall and wearing what looked like a Boy Scout Uniform with some medals and looking through thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle lenses of his eyeglasses. This old guy was an actual Veteran of the Spanish American War. Small world. There too, this is the late 60's, I saw my English teacher from freshman year who at that time was a seminarian studying to be a priest, teaching on a year long sabbatical of sorts, teaching in our high school for a year, after finishing four years of college in the seminary before continuing with an additional four years of seminary training after this year of teaching. It was after all a teaching religious order and his salary from the archdiocese doubt went to support the order. 

He was no longer in a black cassock but in a white tee shirt, shorts and sandals. She was also with what must have been his girlfriend. He saw me during a break from marching and said hello with no other explanation other than to say hello and ask how Junior year was going etc. I guess he left the seminary for one reason, reasons or another etc. ...


The Long Dark Corridor

...I guess that the religious order had decided to maintain the property until it could be evaluated whether to sell it - use it, convert it etc. I think that maybe about fifteen priests and seminarians used the grand estate as a second faculty house - to relieve overcrowding in the primary faculty house – and commuting by car back and forth to the high school. 

In retrospect I connect some dots (possibly in total error) and perhaps it was the gay section of the original faculty house that went into separate quarters at this white elephant mansion.

Oh this speculation breaks down into two categories: good gays, abstaining from gay sex religious and the bad gays - actually occasionally practicing their natural instincts -

There is not much to this story except for connecting dots and wondering. In the middle of that sophomore year, a young, dynamic, charismatic seminarian teacher died in a car crash coming back from some long distance weekend duties - deacon at some parish etc. I remember his picture in the newspaper and the official speculation that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car in this "single vehicle collision" - And then my biology teacher, I liked him, died during the summer break.

I suppose I would not be writing this today except that in the next school year, my junior year, a very prissy but not unlikable priest blurted out something in class. Father Tom, a history teacher, said something like a veiled admission regarding the sudden tragic death of Father Ed, the biology teacher. He said something like "wrapping oneself around a highway pillar was indeed a suspicious thing to happen" while talking to the class one day, I think his comments went over many students heads... 

Chapter Two - The Long Dark Corridor

...But I got the A+++.  Been there.  Done that.  Time to move on. Etc. 

I decided then and there. I would drop his course. So much of what he had fed this class so far was his own personal bullshit full of his ambitious plan to one day run the school system downtown which he in fact did one day. I have since read many things about cults and brainwashing and such and “E.” would have made a great Jim Jones in the secular world etc. IMHO. 

I also as I have written this blog for many years have to wonder how ambitious church lady types with penises, how they rise to the top of their professions being perhaps tops and not giving a shit about who gets ground into sausage along the way, especially children.

I also have  to wonder how “E.” built his great education system as the archdiocese, one by one, shut down their inner city schools and high schools.  That glory sometimes is a story, a press release, as the world and or institution dies from attrition.  

Will the last person in the Archdiocese Education Office at “222” kindly turn off the lights as they leave the building forever. 

I also have to wonder how many times how the elites of the Education Department rubbed elbows with the Elites of the hierarchy at board meetings or gatherings over cocktails and how polite church talk and education talk never got mixed with the very real talk of child abuse and criminal cover up emanating from the Cardinal’s penthouse office suite on the top floor above?...

The End of Michael Grimm’s Career in the House of Representatives ? Homophobia or Mere Lack of Social Skills ???

Scotto and Grimm - Man and Super (GOP) Man?
Bully in the House?

The logical next job for Michael Grimm will be at the corrupt Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at one of those infamous many no-show $200K a year jobs, bones, rewards for doing the dirty for the power brokers around the Port of New York and New Jersey.

I see that recently, they put a limit on business that would go into Mariner Harbor’s Port Ivory facility in Staten Island, Grimm’s home base. 

I am sure there is one of those angry Letters to the Editor kind of things posted on Grimm’s website to the Port Authority, letters of feigned outrage that so many possible jobs there will be defaulted over to the Soprano state other end of NYC area shipping in Newark.

If you live in Staten Island, and want to get into Manhattan proper of NYC via Brooklyn, it is $13 dollar toll on the Verrazano, a piece of crap bridge built by Donald Trump’s father, on the cheap, no walkway for pedestrians etc., just a throughway from Jersey to Brooklyn/Manhattan/Long Island.

If you want to shop in Jersey at Sam’s Club or get a better price on gasoline or liquor from Staten Island, it is $13 toll on the three ancient ready to fall down bridges that connect Staten Island to New Jersey. (Like what do they do with $13 round trip tolls like build new bridges or build Port Authority owned billion dollar office towers in downtown NYC?)

There are of course “resident” discounts on the bridge for regular Staten Island commuters with E-Z Pass, the electronic thing in your car window that automatically deducts from you credit card every time you cross a bridge or go through a tunnel.

With all the traffic on bridges, the business of shipping in the Port, Michael Grimm is not on any transportation committee but his expertise from being a so-called FBI undercover agent on Wall Street is financials. I wonder how may nickel and dime "Penny Stock" brokers Grimm's undercover work brought to "Justice"? No big bankers or brokers for sure. Too big to prosecute.

His joint bill, Grimm/Lautenberg in the House/Senate proposed legislation to have the Federal Government monitor and approve Toll Increases in NYC, it was a dead in the water bill from day one, filler for the congressional newsletter. Look at what I say I am (not) doing for the people of my district. Yeah right. Etc.

Which leaves us with a Representative’s overcharge of Testosterone on a NY1 News Reporter in a Capitol office building with a fancy show balcony that is usually used for photo ops by the media with various members of the Congress.

The NY1 news station is channel One on the Time Warner Cable package, one of several available to customers in the NYC market.  It is almost a non-news show with what is mostly repeated from mainstream items and the usual local clips, pictures of schools, school children from Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island every couple of hours to appear relevant in an academic sense. 

You do not get breaking lead news from NY1. So in a sense Reporter Michael Scotto I doubt makes 50K a year in a faux cable news business.

So it would seem unusual for Michael Scotto to bait Michael Grimm with a question about a long standing on hold “ethics” matter, on automatic hold in the Republican controlled House. Wink. Nod.

And Michael Grimm has a good ole boy cowboy reputation in the GOP. The kinda a guy still locked in eternal High School manhood and not knowing jack shit about love, sex or lady parts etc.

Mike no doubt was with a mixed group including Democrats when he peed in the Galilee Sea in Israel on some paid for by taxpayer fact finding jucket etc. and rumored to be skinnydipping with the boys, "real men" of the GOP and Dem parties. LOL

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2012/08/staten-island-gop-skinnydipping-sausage_4570.html

Which makes me think that Michael Scotto, the cable reporter was possibly getting a pound of flesh out of a probably love hate relationship of media sound bites where on more than one occasional no doubt Testosterone Mike let Michael Scotto know his place in the feeding chain of life in that it is no secret that Scotto is openly gay. Whatever.

http://gawker.com/were-michael-grimm-s-threats-against-a-gay-reporter-hom-1511852464

It is well known among people who know and work with him that Scotto is gay. “Within the station community it’s pretty well known,” one colleague told Gawker. The 35-year-old political reporter didn’t ask Grimm about anything pertaining to sexuality, so it’s unclear, based only on the video, why Grimm issued a series of insults aimed at questioning Scotto’s masculinity—a common weapon of homophobes seeking to torment and marginalize gay men.

And the point here was to torment Scotto. “You’re not man enough,” Grimm seethes. “You’re not man enough.” And embarrass him, too. You can’t see it in the video, but his colleagues and other reporters were watching the entire thing from a few feet away.

We don’t know whether Grimm was aware of Scotto’s sexuality, and his office didn’t acknowledge our repeated attempts to contact the congressman. The men know each well enough, though. “He and Congressman Grimm have worked together professionally for a while,” NY1’s Washington bureau chief Jennifer Babich told Gawker. “But this is the first time [Grimm has] said anything like this.” (Babich added that the men “have had several interviews” together.) At the very least, they were known quantities to each other.

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MayB #MichaelGrimm was hitn on him? Ive heard "BreakU LikeABoi" in tons of porn!ThreatsAgnst GayReporterHomophobic? http://t.co/mj3m3nBRE1.
— LA DeShane (@Lvng1Tor) January 30, 2014

Being a Flaming A-hole Like Timothy Dolan is Not a Sin ; His Being the Archbishop of New York is the Real Sin and or Tragedy – Explains what Pope Francis Really Meant

(An infallible) “Pope Francis’s job is not to change Church Teaching but present it as clearly as possible.” (1:45 – 1:50 CBS Video Interview July 30 below) – Current Archbishop of NY Timmy Dolan

(Pope’s)  “…Emphasis and Tone… may be something people find as new and refreshing but I for one don’t think it is…”  (3:38 – 3:48 Video link below)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/30/anti-lgbt-cardinal-dolan-pope-didnt-actually-mean-to-change-policy-on-gay-priests/

Cardinal Timothy Dolan appeared to be trying to walk back recent comments by Pope Francis regarding gay priests in a CBS News interview Tuesday morning, explaining to hosts Gayle King and Charlie Rose that the pontiff’s refusal to judge them did not signal a change in Catholic Church doctrine.  

What the pope was saying, Dolan told Rose, was that, “While certain acts may be wrong, we will always love and respect the person and treat the person with dignity,” describing an intersection between church doctrine regarding the “immorality” of sex outside marriage and acceptance of believers regardless of sexual orientation or other social factors… 

“That probably is not possible,” Dolan answered, before telling Rose he expressed the sentiment incorrectly. “Homosexuality is not a sin. 

Homosexual acts are. Just like heterosexuality is not a sin, although heterosexual acts outside of marriage — life-loving, life-giving faith between a man and a woman — that would be simple. A pope couldn’t do that.”

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Soho Masses - London - Wandering Gays, the New Jews of the New Reich Catholic Church

Jihad against France and Britain’s political moves to legalize secular same sex marriage has the back biters in the Reich Catholic Church going after Catholic Gays and Lesbians, the new wandering Jews of that Reich Church.

Just ran into this story about Archbishop Nichols in London putting down his fabulous patent leather shoe to forbid the so-called “Soho Masses”, the temporary gatherings twice a month of the wandering Gays organization’s present sent up at a shitty looking church from Dickens time down a dark back alley/street in Westminster on Warwicke Street.

Archbishop Nichols you may remember went out of his way and his bailiwick to praise the “Courage of the Abusers” in Ireland right after the historic Child Abuse document of the Ryan Report in 2009.

Now, rainbow colored altar linen or vestments are not in Reich Church sacred tradition and cannot not be allowed along with the gathering of wandering Gays that want an occasional feel good, you are welcome here in God’s name atmosphere in their own element at a twice a month mass. Like Jesus the Hippie never wore the occasional tie-dyed tee shirt.

The Church of the Lady of the Assumption with its dark foreboding alleyway like place/street in central London is now needed to process disaffected Anglicans wanting solidarity with the women hating, gay hating Reich Catholic Church. And of course the occasional Gay Mass would scare the rich Anglicans away from holy mudder church.

The organization “Soho Masses” is becoming a floating organization looking for Gay Friendly Churches to deliver the odd Gay orientated audience sacred service, keeping one step ahead of the Grand Inquisitors, Conservative Snitches and Nero XVI’s Pretorian guards.

I may be wrong but there is in the current news that the SOHO Masses might be moving to a Jesuit church of the Immaculate Conception on Farm Street in Mayfair. 

That I think may have been a carrot waved by Nichols and company to add to their media releases to say that there is still a place for celibate self-hating gays but only at their local hetero hate the gays local parish. Whatever.

All this hate and it becomes clear looking at politics here and in Europe and the RCC that white and male is first and foremost. Brown and non-hetero (other) is a total inconvenience in dealing with those others.

Joe Ratzinger must stay up late at nights and regret that the ovens at Auschwitz of his beloved childhood memories are no longer in working order for the new Jews of sexual non-conformity, the new enemies of the Neo-Nazi Catholic Church in Rome.

He and his jiz crony medieval junto ruling party in his personal Reich Church is truly an evil factor to be considered, watch your back always, in the present global situation.  

  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/02/us-britain-catholic-gay-idUSBRE9010KU20130102


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Jan 22,13

Link supplied by commentor “Anonymous”.

http://www.westendextra.com/news/2013/jan/forum-radically-christian-attempt%E2%80%99-meet-spiritual-hunger-london%E2%80%99s-lgbt-roman-catholics

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America is Going Queer over Paul Ryan? Ryan-Romney Ticket 2012

Mandatory Republican Mean Spirit Shots

Ayn Rand turns me on - No she was not a dyke!

Ryan Romney Ticket 2012 - Paul, Get rid of Grandpa!

Oh Yeah - I'm Kool!

I am with Stupid - I am with Sexy

Oh those sexy girly marathon(?) legs!

Bends Over - Even when he "eats".

Team Romney - Mitt, Paul and Ann

Mitt, Paul and Ann - Team Romney 

(gay, gayer, beard)

- fighting for the White Right sort of people.  

Not any of the "you" (little) "people" types.  (wink, nod)

It doesn't get any Gayer Better than this!

LOL

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Christian Vampire Preacher Steve Newlin still Preaching Je$u$ - Amen - True Blood

It is amazing to live long enough and see all the con artist televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Baker, Pat Robertson and the Graham boys, father and son act, get away with so much fraud regarding the real Jesus and hundreds of millions raked in annually from a bunch of dumb rubes in the tent.  

And of course there is that over 50 RC female demographic that continues to fund the bishops and keeps their child rape rings going, that is so disheartening.

I have found the perfect offset recently or comic relief in the televangelist character Steve Newlin on the HBO Vampire soap series True Blood.

In case you never watch, "Tru Blood" is a chemical cocktail, invented by the Japanese, that is a perfect substitute for human blood. As such there is a coming out of the closet and or coffin of vampires trying to mainstream themselves into everyday humanity.

Steve Newlin is an evangelist bent on ridding humanity of the newly uncloseted uncasketed vampire minority. His parents were killed by vampires.  He wants to destroy this struggling minority before they gain full legal recognition in the eyes of the law.  He even runs a paramilitary anti-vampire training group that conducts guerilla warfare on the vampire community.

Now the vampire community is not all innocence and love.  It is all PR as they try to mask centuries of bloodshed and killings that have resourced their particular lifestyle.

Jason "Born Again" Stackhouse

Into Reverend Newlin’s anti-vampire boot camp wanders the aimless soul/stud of Jason Stackhouse, brother of the main character of the show Sookie Stackhouse.  Jason is looking for more than the run of the mill Jesus stuff.  He eventually finds his way into the Rev. Newlin’s wife’s bed but that is Jason, who is rarely not naked, rarely not in coitus in this HBO soap. This all takes place in the south in Louisiana. Where else.

Well the new season for a twist has Rev. Steve Newlin now turned into a Vampire and as an added bonus is out of his sexual closet and hot on the trail of Jason Stackhouse’s usually naked ass.

LMAO

Steve Newlin

Steve Newlin is a former reverend of the Fellowship of the Sun and recently turned vampire. The son of anti-vampire advocate Theodore Newlin, he initially continued his father's work after the murder of his entire family. He was a fanatic and a firm believer that vampires were 'ungodly creatures' who knew no 'humanity'. However, after becoming a vampire himself, he seems to relish his new undead status, rather joyfully remarking how humans should be treated like cattle. 

Newlin is first presented as somewhat of a well-spoken man with a friendly disposition that, while a little odd at times, is altogether cheerful. However, as the series progresses, we see that most of this is a front for his hatred for what happened to him and his family. He is shown to be unstable and unhinged beneath his amiable facade. As a vampire, this tendency seems even more pronounced.

And worse than all that, Revered Steve Newlin cannot give up his calling to Jesus.

He still has his meal ticket TV ministry and not surprisingly his Jesus is in favor the eternal life of vampires.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…

Etc.

True Blood

(Warning: Don’t invite any vampires or televangelists into your homes!)


LOL

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Sophia Petrillo - Definition - Gay vs. Queer

Philly Crime Boss Rigali Quits Amid Abuse Scandal, GOP Operative Denver Archbishop Brought In to Sway 2012 Election

In a critical move to sway the 2012 election, the cynical monarchists in the Vatican are bringing in a RNC favorite to bring order to the chaos left by crime boss Big Frank Rigali in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

Gay hating Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput is being brought in to tow the church party line of total innocence in face of the massive abuse scandal in Philly.  A man who does not supposedly believe in the separation of church and state except when the state pays his way tax-free.

A bureaucrat, who gets tax free status on his parochial school system but can reject the innocent children of a lesbian couple in his schools, a move by him and Father Bill Breslin of Boulder that is not being Christian but purely Catholic. (Nothing personal you damned to hell souls etc.)

Great going Chuck.  You reek of the redneck Jesus thing!  Who are you going to endorse – god nutter Rick Perry or Opus Dei Rick Santorum?  (Has to be a man you know – women do not have souls – do they?)

Aging Rigali is moving to his newly built retirement Mcmansion in Tennessee (not pictured above but perhaps similar).   Can’t cry poor in the abuse settlements thing and live like a king in Philly anymore in the Bishop’s mansion.

Tennessee next stop for Rigali?

Father Bill Breslin of Boulder is no doubt crying today as Chaput leaves his Colorado archdiocese.  Who can he blame his gay hate on now except himself? His enabler is leaving town. 

Father Bill Breslin and his Cafeteria Dogma 

GOP is delighted that the plan moves forward to turn blue state (2008) Pennsylvania back into RED.  With Chaput in the pulpit ready to get rid of Senator Casey, a tolerant, weak, human being, Rick Santorum, the only good Catholic man on woman left, will gladly deliver the Commonwealth back to Catholic Jesus Sharia Law.


Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry 

Galvanized by battles against same-sex marriage and stem cell research and alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry - who is Catholic but supports abortion rights - these bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are blanketing churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate as among a handful of "non-negotiable issues." 

To the dismay of liberal Catholics and some other bishops, traditional church concerns about the death penalty or war are often not mentioned. 

Archbishop Chaput has discussed Catholic priorities in the election in 14 of his 28 columns in the free diocesan newspaper this year. His archdiocese has organized voter registration drives in more than 40 of the largest parishes in the state and sent voter guides to churches around the state. Many have committees to help turn out voters and are distributing applications for absentee ballots. 

In an interview in his residence here, Archbishop Chaput said a vote for a candidate like Mr. Kerry who supports abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research would be a sin that must be confessed before receiving Communion. 

"If you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" he asked. "And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes."

You may call me nuts!  But you can’t make this crazy religious shit up.  It is too strange for fiction.

And so it goes.

Marcus Bachmann – Christofascism vs. the Barbarians

There’s a lot of anger and hate floating around the Internet these days regarding Michelle Bachmann’s light in the loafers husband Dr. Marcus Bachmann, the deprogrammer for gays, with a mail order PhD. in Chist?ian counc?ling.

God only knows what hell those 23 foster kids went through living in the Bachmann Chris?ian home for thirty dollars a day each, tax free, over the years. Were they there merely as a meal ticket for the Bachmanns or were they there to experiment the new world order on? 

It is because the Bachmann’s, in the case with the foster kids, had to send them to public school and not to home schooling like the Bachmann’s five natural Christian programmed children,  that is what got future Representative Bachmann all steamed up about the mainstream science and evolution thingies.  About those things in particular being taught in the public schools is what started her present career in politics with the sole purpose to shut down public education.  

It is their Jesus’ way or the Highway!

It is the least common denominator factor thingy in the ongoing dumbing down of America thing.

This is what I do not like but it is human nature.  Cher, on her twatter, sends out an insulting message about Marcus and the whole world, especially the MSM, sits back and reports on the bitch bitch rants of the gay community towards a supposedly Vatican like professional closeted fraud such as Doctor Marcus. 

In a way, the Barbarians that Doc Marcus calls homosexuals, Barbarians that must be taught and disciplined, is in a way code talk for the new Christofascism.  It is "the way" of the extreme right wing of the Republican party that has hyjacked that party.  Making people act against their instincts and or their own best interests is what fascism is all about.

Pro-life is code for the abortion issue and not code for the need for social networks to follow the teaching of Jesus regarding the personal obligation to love your neighbor.

And the name of Jesus itself is code talk, not for the God of traditional Trinity delusion.

Their Jesus is God.  Yahweh is Jewish and suspect and the Holy Spirit is any spiel to talk god bullshit and empty the sheep’s pockets.  Jesus is God Incorporated and Tax Free for every huckster or used car salesman who can start a store front meal ticket church.  Halleluiah!

In fact, for Opus Dei candidates like Rick Santorum or other Christofascists like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann, it is all about appearances no matter how dysfunctional and hell like their domestic family situation is for their children.  Appearance and hypocrisy are all that matter in Tea Partyville.

In a way the Fascism in the name of Christ is nothing new in the last century.  In a way the very pagan Arian pseudoscience of Creationism, or even the theology of Marx as a Christ substitute, has all been tried and tested in Europe in the nineteen thirties prior to fifty million human beings being wasted in WWII in an experiment to see how far insanity can fly, walk, talk or stick to the wall  in any political forum.

Worked before for the crazies.  Let’s do it again.

History repeats itself.

God (the real God) save us all!

Cistercian Brothel/Hotel in Rome shut down

Pope ousts 'loose living' monks of Rome's Santa Croce monastery

… a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.

As part of Benedict XVI's crackdown on "loose living" within the Catholic church, 20 or so Cistercian monks are now being evicted from the monastery at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, …

"An inquiry found evidence of liturgical and financial irregularities as well as lifestyles that were probably not in keeping with that of a monk," said Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. "The church remains open but the monks are awaiting transfer."

Reports saying the monks amassed large debts have also emerged, but Benedettini declined to give further details of the Vatican report, which was signed off in March.

The monks' days have been numbered since 2009, when the Vatican sacked their flamboyant abbot, Father Simone Fioraso, a former fashion designer who built up a cult following among Rome's fashionable aristocratic crowd as well as show business worshippers such as Madonna, who prayed at the church in 2008.

…In 2009 Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her "holy dance" before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines…

You cannot make this kind of shit up!

Madonna praying in the presence of all of St. Helena’s Rodeo Drive style boutique relics ( quite chic and fashionably nice ). ??????????????

They use every other word in the dictionary other than brothel, the MSM does, in their kid glove treatment of cleric abuse, right under the nose of Joe the Pope, aka the local bishop.

( BTW the monks take master card, visa and american express for your anonymous stay in holy luxury and a relic in every bedroom for your kinky pleasure! ) ( do IT just the the Borgias did IT! – Tee hee hee )

Hotel, Limousine 24/7, Lap Dances by a Nun – Holy Chris!t! – Luther, as metaphor, has come back to life to witness the debauchery of the Church of Rome all over again five centuries later.

These truly are the end times of the RC church as we have known it.

And then again maybe this is being all blown out of proportion.

A simple bed and breakfast at an old monastery to earn a few shekels, with a taxi service available to tourists? Yeah right!

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” as one of my many sainted Aunt Marys used to say.

You can’t really, really make this kind of shit up!

HMOG! (sic). ETC.

Francis Spellman - Patron Saint of Closeted Clergy

Looking at the agony of some closeted clergy who can’t leave their job and or vocation, they have no job skills. And quite frankly they have never touched a child or adolescent in the rounds of their duties.

Looking at the heartbreak of young men who cannot lie to themselves about their natural sexuality, who cannot pretend that they are not homosexual in their life outlook or deny their birthright. They do not want to be clergy living a lie. That is one reason the clergy is dying. For centuries it has always been the "odd" son that got foisted off the family meal ticket and into Holy Orders.

Looking for an image to match the hypocrisy of the self serving American Bishops, trying for close to a decade now, to keep throwing shit against the wall in hopes that it will stick and find a sufficient scapegoat, to blame the clergy child sex abuse scandal on, nothing sticks except the truth.

Mismanagement and not caring about humanity has marked the American Catholic Hierarchy for decades.

The magisterium of the RC church has always been trickle down from the top. Arch-conservatives such as Francis Cardinal Spellman set the tone of things to come, failure, in the American Catholic church when he said “Change will not get past the Statue of Liberty” at Vatican II to his cronies.

When the John Jay College/USCCB whitewash talks about priests not properly trained in the 1940s and 1950s and not being able to function, they only scratch the surface of ten more needed studies on human sexuality and the repressed state of it in the RC church.

“Researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said most of the abusive priests were ordained in the 1940s and 50s and were not properly trained to confront the social upheavals of the 1960s.”

Interesting point. But who was in charge of the American Catholic Church in the 40s, 50s and 60s or set the tone for the whole nation. None other than Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, first among equals among American Catholic clergy and very clever and very ambitious to push that church’s foreign born agenda.

“Franny” was the success role model of every Irish Catholic boy in the Seminary who wanted to be rich, respected and powerful. And yeah there was that ritual and Jesus thing too. But the real power was in raising money from rich friends to build schools, hospitals, universities and churches too.

The baby boom of post WWII meant that you had to crank up the seminary machine and spit hundreds and thousands of new priests out on an annual basis to maintain all that new church property, schools, hospitals, universities and churches too.

On that point, the John Jay College report may be right. But then again what the Vatican is presently embracing with pandering to the right wing SSPX party in the church is probably a mistake and an unintended cup of hemlock.

Grinding out priests out of makeshift seminaries in South America, Africa and Asia is setting the stage for the final refuge of the RC church and also the final death throes of that church using the Spellman model of church business success to sell the product. It is a defective dysfunctional model of that product, because child abuse among untrained and sexually repressed, closeted, celibate clergy will produce the same results in the rest of world that it has done here in America in the past half century.

I remember attending the Army Navy Game in 1967 with my father in Philly. The loud speaker made the announcement that Francis Cardinal Spellman, Vicar General of the Armed Forces, had died. The crowd was momentarily silent and then went back to its business.

I asked my father who Cardinal Spellman was. He gave me that “don’t ask” non verbal Irish look. It was also the look you might get when asking about uncle Fred who you never met. It was that don’t ask about your crazy queer uncle in the attic look. I shut up.

Indeed, Cardinal Spellman’s taste for chorus boys was no secret amongst Irish Catholics it would seem. The MSM complied with the conspiracy to keep quiet as well on the subject of the biggest queen in America, red dress and all, living in the Bishop’s Palace at 50th St. and Madison Avenue in New York City on the grounds of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Perhaps the present political culture wars started in the thirties when people like Joseph P. Kennedy, Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) and Franny Spellman sat down to dinner in Boston to plot the silence of radio populist Father Charles Coughlin and plot other political strategy for the 1936 re-election of FDR. But this is not really a history lesson, is it?

An aside, I don’t think that J. Edgar Hoover was as big a queen as Francis, as some say. J. might have been a closeted gay and maybe even asexual. I don’t think that he wore dresses. I think those stories about J. Edgar are exaggerated and revenge after that blackmailing bureaucratic snake went to his eternal reward and have been perpetuated by his many, many, many enemies.

Indeed, the dysfunction of recent American culture seems to stem from the McCarthy era. Everybody knows that Joe McCarthy was a tortured repressed closet gay and only married to have a beard wife. Another crony of Joe Kennedy, former gangster and bootlegger, and father of a future Catholic (first and only, thank God) U.S. President.

The overtone of the present culture war is not so much about gay or suppressed gay sexuality as it is about suppressed sexuality among Christians who have a mindset that all sex is dirty. It is an immature view that the rest of the world is not aware of from a distance. But if the American Empire falls tomorrow and people, future historians, ask why. One primary reason was that honest discourse in the public arena had to always talk around the elephant in the room, and that is the Christian distorted view of human sexuality. Laws against women, laws against gays, they are all laws against God’s gift to humanity – sexuality.

In a sense there was one great conspiracy among the RCs or the Irish Catholics in general to get a RC and or Irish Catholic into the White House. And if that meant covering up everybody’s personal flaws - of McCarthy, Kennedy, Spellman, well it worked. Don’t ask, don’t tell worked quite well for centuries among the rich and the elites of governments and church hierarchies.

There is an incredible amount of silence and lack of published documentation about Franny Spellman’s open secret sexuality. Even the New York Times kept silent. Now that was power to be feared for the NYT to be silenced back then when that paper still had a backbone.

So when the present hierarchy of the American Catholic Church want to blame child abuse on the 40s, 50s and 60s, let’s also have an open discussion about celibacy and closeted clergy and the patron saint of closeted “celibate” clergy, let’s start talking about Saint Franny, our gay uncle in America’s history attic. The truth could set you free.





New word for Gay – Takei (Tah-kay)

This is so cool!

Cool in terms of my definition of Cultural Christianity - turn the other cheek and all that (at least once in the face of adversity).

In response to HATE Legislation pending in the Tennessee state legislature forbidding public school teachers from discussing homosexuality –

in other words, the use of the word Gay BANNED! in the classroom –

Actor George Takei, “Sulu” from Star Trek days, has volunteered for his name to be used as a substitute for the word gay to offset this Fairytale Christian backed legislation in Tennessee.

Of course this may just be a publicity stunt by an out of work actor but hey, it is a creative construct against Institutional Hate.

The Tennessee Legislature’s Camfield/Dunn Gay Hate Bill cannot be passed until 2012, must be held in committee, in order to cloud the election then with the hate agenda thingy. People are motivated not to come and vote for issues of the common good? They are more likely to turn out to vote on discrimination and hate legislation?

Why not pass the law now? Why waste good hate legislation on 2012. You can come up with some other form of Christian tough love towards the men and or women, humanity that you single out to hate. Pass it now. Let’s test it in the courts.

Instead of getting government out of your face as these social conservatives claim they want, these dudes want to put government in your underwear. Perverts.




In other words – It’s okay to be Takei (Tah-kay)!

(for some people at least)

My retired friend Jesus (Hay-soos) in Vegas thinks it is a sure bet for love and tolerance to offset the hate(rs).

Have a nice day.

Agora – Alejandro Amenabar – Hypatia of Alexandria

I caught an interesting flick on cable the other night.  It is called Agora (2009), (the Greek name for the Latin word Forum).  Set around the year 391 A.D., it is about the last days of paganism in the historic city of Alexandria in Egypt.

While it plays tricks with history, it is a beautifully filmed cinematic wonder, but not quite in the league with past big Hollywood blockbusters like Ben Hur and Cleopatra.  But close.

The grittiness of the sand and sun in Egypt is everywhere in this film.  And even if the Agora or Forum with its public buildings, markets and temples are probably made of paper mache, the sense of recreating these buildings is itself a refreshing attempt to reenact ancient history.   One has to wonder how much of this movie set is real and temporarily built and how much is computer aided design illusion.

While the set satisfies me as to accuracy, the history depicted in the film is questionable.

Because real history back then comes down to us in sparse pieces, historians have speculated and added to those sparse fragments to paint a picture that can be interpreted in many ways and at different times in history.

The film is directed by Chilean/Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar, whose Oscar winning best foreign language film in 2005, The Sea Inside, was based on real life quadriplegic Ramon Sampedro’s almost thirty year struggle to have an assisted suicide.  That movie starred Javier Bardem in what I believe was his breakout role that got him his next big exposure in the American flick No Country for Old Men (2007).

Director Amenabar is openly gay in Spain.  I do not know if he is an atheist.

Much of the criticism of this movie Agora in the catholic blogosphere is shaped as “anti-Catholic”, presumably anti-Roman Catholic which is the predominate Christian sect in western Europe.  If anything it is framed as anti-Christian.  The pagans are now a minority in Alexandria in 391 and the Emperor in Constantinople outlaws all religions except Christianity.  You know what hits the fan.

There are of course riots.  Pagans against Christians and Christians against Jews in this final push for power of Constantine’s church here on this earth.

There is a certain anti-clericalism in movies made in Europe.  I am reminded of the German movie about the first female pope, Pope Joan (2009), or so the legend goes.

Agora is bent to show the final victory over the victory of the Christian faith over the disillusioned declining pagan faiths of the old Roman and Egyptian empires. 

Rather than do some scholarly history about what is what in 391 Alexandria, a lot of myth is repeated and no doubt a great deal of what the public might perceive in the historic female philosopher/mathematician Hypatia comes from modern sources such as the Atheist American Astronomer Carl Sagan in his TV series Cosmos in 1980. 

Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor, and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the early Church with paganism. In great personal danger she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint.(Sagan, p. 366)

Is this movie anti-catholic?  Not really.  Is it anti-Christian?  No.  Is it perhaps a bit anti-Byzantine Orthodox or anti-Coptic?  But you must remember that many sides in the day had to have their own thugs to protect their own interests in the day.

Even the last segments of a Roman Army cannot control the mobs that control and swarm over Alexandria. 

Hypatia (played by Rachel Weisz) is out of her league in terms of probable history.  Hypatia was likely over sixty when she was killed by a mob.  Hardly the likely love interest of a young Christian slave boy.  

That the mob happened to be Christian and she was a well known member of the pagan Alexandria aristocracy, so she was well known enough to incite anger, jealousy or political rage. 

Besides the age thing, the movie has Hypatia researching gravity and the sun as the center of the solar system.  Possible but not probable. 

There is of course one scene where the supposedly surviving annex of the previously destroyed Library of Alexandria is sacked by a Christian mob.  This is what I see most mentioned in blogs.  The Catholics don’t like that scene in particular, though in reality a small defunct library had once probably existed in the Serapeum, a temple complex devoted to the Ptolemaic Greek/Egyptian fusion/invented god Serapis – and destroyed after the Byzantine Emperor’s anti-pagan edict.

I may be just another dumbed down American who was taught no real history in twelve years of catholic education before George Washington and his cherry tree or Ben Franklin and his kite.

Never heard of Hypatia before a few days when I saw the flick Agora on cable TV.  I am a Rachel Weisz fan.  Loved her in that Kabbalah inspired movie The Fountain (2006).

The Movies from day one have fractured history in order to get the story into an allotted time along with standard movie story telling technique.

I like revisionist history.  The first time I hear about history stuff is usually in the movies such as the Inquisition lasting in Spain until the nineteeth century – Goya’s Ghosts (2006).  Etc.

It stimulates me to research the moments mentioned and get a better handle on the reality of the fantasy depicted in the movie.

Movies can be powerful things.  Powerful tools of entertainment and also potentially powerful tools of propaganda if you don’t like the way your ancestors are depicted by a director passionate about his craft.  That craft is telling a story.

I see that Agora was virtually shut out of American theatres with maybe a dozen screens going through a season.  Have to wonder if the Catholic League got through again and got their way again in suppressing ideas more so than cinematography in this very interesting piece of visual “cultural” history?

Looking at the bottom line and the lack of interest of the Vatican and or the Catholic League in this film, I would guess that Amenabar was not looking for or could not find an American distributor for this small gem of film in 2009.