This Is What Happens When Maureen Dowd Gets It Right

So, Our Lady of Ginger Devotion Maureen Dowd wrote about how the Molesty Church says the attempted priestification of ladies is pretty much just as bad as making out with infants. And for the first time in the history of Reblogging Maureen, MoDo reached out and grabbed my heart. You know why? Because she's pissed off, and she means it, and she cares, and you can smell it coming off the page. And she hit a raw spot inside me that even Goo Gone cannot heal.

Being raised Roman Catholic in America is weird, to say the least. If you live in the Northeast, you are likely to be surrounded by many of your own kind. This is good, in that you feel less alone with your incense and your guilt. But it is also bad, because you grow up thinking it's completely normal for men who claim to be celibate to tell you who is suitable for screwing, and when, and how, and why. You will learn, as Maureen Dowd and I did, that sex is for procreation only; that birth control is almost the same as abortion; that abortion is murder; that murder sends you straight to hell; and that homosexual men are evil buttsexing Sodomites who all want to destroy Society As We Know It and who most certainly are not welcome at Bingo Night.

You will most likely not learn much about homosexual women. It ain't sex if a schwang ain't involved, so lesbians are sort of just sinfully smushing their vaginas together, or something. But you will meet nuns, and you will learn that they are also celibate and are married to Jesus, kinda. Maybe you will grow up and spend a month one summer volunteering at a Catholic medical clinic, and your supervisor will be the most heartbreakingly bitter dyke you've ever met, and you will wonder if things would have been different if she had been able to choose a partner she could touch without shame and even bring this partner to Mass, maybe while toting along a kid who eventually ends up shrieking during the homily and has to be hastily escorted to the crying room.

It is possible that all the things you hear in church will roll off your back, that you won't absorb them and take them with you into adulthood. It is also possible that you will feel terror in your heart every time you masturbate, and not just because your door doesn't have a lock. Maybe sometimes, to your immense horror, you'll find yourself attracted to someone of your own gender. Maybe you will hit yourself to knock those feelings out of you. Maybe you will grow up confused and scared and have a hard time getting into the whole "sex thing" because you think that something evil shouldn't feel good.

Maybe one day you will find yourself hunched over in an empty pew in a basilica, praying to God for forgiveness because you took something called "emergency contraception," which you know in your heart just means "quickie abortion" even though the woman at Planned Parenthood (who is probably the first incarnation of an angel you will actually encounter) explained the difference. And maybe you will feel a little better, like God still loves you and this really is His house, where all are welcome, no matter how grave their sins. Jesus was nice to criminals and he gave them a chance to become better people, and that's what this whole place is about, right?

And then perhaps you will decide to light a candle, so you walk up to a very pretty shrine in the corner and realize that it is dedicated to the all the "unborn children" who have been "murdered" by selfish sinners, and it will finally hit you, at long last, that you are not welcome here, and that there is no solace for you here, or for your out-and-proud gay friends, or for your annoying lesbian friends who still won't stop quoting Ani DiFranco, or for your unmarried sex-having friends of any orientation, or for your divorced friends, or for anyone who eschews hateful fairy tales in favor of reason and rationale. And maybe you'll cry about this, because you are sad, but also because you are so very relieved to quit a club that builds the loveliest structures in which to spew the ugliest hate.

Maybe sex will get better after that.

Maybe you'll learn more about the world's oldest and most successful corporation. Perhaps you'll discover that while the Roman Catholic Church is a fascinating institution that provides food, water, shelter, art and inspiration to countless people around the world, it is also a sick cult that attracts, nurtures and protects people who would really like to put their dick inside your little boy. Perhaps this is why all those big important Catholic men are so against abortion; for a pedophile, it's the ultimate cockblock. After all, you can't hump a toddler who was never born!

All of this is to say that I have not one snide criticism of Maureen Dowd's column from this Sunday. There's no vampire humping or ball bouncing, but there is something smart and righteous and angry, and you should read it, especially if you are one of the billion faithful around the world, and especially especially if you still put money in the collection plate on Sunday.

After reading your MoDo, try this little mathematical game: Calculate just how much of your cash goes to fund the protection of child rapists. Can't be a lot, right? I mean, your priest, he's a sweetheart and not at all pervy, and most of the money you donate goes toward the new church bulletin and the landscaping and the orphans in Chile, right? What is it, maybe like a penny or two, probably, that makes it into the diocese's coffers or the Vatican's bank account or wherever that kind of money might be put? Sure, just a few cents.

Now multiply that by one billion people under the sway of liars and pederasts and charlatans, most notably an ex-Nazi who refused to fire a U.S. priest who raped more than 200 deaf boys. 

And take your goddamned money back.

 So Sara Benincasa's not Muslim? We guess not. Her "Reblogging Maureen" appears Mondays at Wonkette.