Times are hard — rock hard, if you know what we mean — for the few remaining adherents of Holy Mother Church. And now, the institution that continues to employ pedophile protector Bernard Cardinal Law finds itself with yet another sexxxytimes conundrum. To wit: Is that an aspergillum under your cassock, Father, or are you just happy to see us? Turns out that for two dozen women, the priest is indeed happy to see them!
Twenty-six women have written a letter to Cool New Pope asking him if he could just be cool about this whole no-sex-for-priests thing for a little while.
The letter, published by La Stampa newspaper’s Vatican Insider website on Sunday, began with a plea for the pontiff to take heart and make celibacy optional for the signatories’ paramours, who happen to be priests. “Dear Pope Francis, we are a group of women from all over Italy (and further afield) and are writing to you to break down the wall of silence and indifference that we are faced with every day,” wrote the women (who signed with their first names and a last initial). “Each of us is in, was or would like to start a relationship with a priest we are in love with.”
C'mon, Cool New Pope, we think you are cool, why not let the priests have their cheesecake and bone it too? What's a little forbidden-but-thank-Jeebus-it's-consensual-for-once sexxxy times between consenting adults? These women were simply tempted by forbidden fruit, as is their weak and sinful nature.
The women admitted that they knew it was wrong to enter into amorous relationships with priests, and implied that, at least to some extent the priests respected their vows of chastity, but added, “in most cases, despite all efforts to renounce it, one cannot manage to give up such a solid and beautiful bond. Unfortunately, this brings with it all the pain of not being able to live it fully.”
Hey, that sounds curiously like the reasoning employed by another group of people who the Catholic Church likes to shame about their sexuality! Thing is, though, that while Deuteronomy criminalizes same-sex attraction — along with wearing cotton-poly blends and gettin' down at Shrimpfest — there isn't a single Biblical verse that says priests can't make with the sexxxy. So basically, like almost everything else in the Catholic Church, the Pope could make this happen if he wanted to.
True story: Yr Wonket went to high school with a kid whose dad was a Catholic priest. "WAT!" you are surely exclaiming, as you begin to wonder if being a priest in Yr Wonket's home state of Minnesota isn't such a bad idea (free room and board!). But no, the priest in question was originally a preacher in one of those heretical mainline Protestant churches, the kind what allows hot P-in-V procreative action among its clergy, and then, later in life, the preacher decided that Roman Catholicism was actually the correct faith, except by then, he'd already made babbies with his wifey. But Holy Mother Church, eager for a rare, late-in-life convert, made an exception and allowed the preacher to be ordained as a priest and remain married. He didn't even have to disown his own children! Such compassion is the way of the Lord.
That's basically what the women are asking Cool New Pope to do, and it appears Cool New Pope has some personal experience in this arena (not like that, grow up).
But as a cardinal, Francis (aka Jose Mario Bergoglio) was close friends with Jeronimo Podesta, a former bishop who left the Church to marry his secret lover. Francis even kept in touch with the former bishop’s widow, Clelia Luro, during the early months of his pontificate until Luro died last year.
Alas, alack, Cool New Pope is already on record as saying he's probably going to stick with the celibacy requirement, because if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it is broke, just move the priest to a new parish and pretend nothing ever happened.
[ Vatican Insider / Daily Beast ]
Asking for a friend?
That's some Felonius Monk, right there.