If the Bishop Were a Witch, She'd Say, "I'm Meltinnngggg....."

One of the Inky's lead stories this morning describes one of the biggest contractions of the Roman Catholic Church in our nation's history. Despite the fact that the population of South Jersey is growing rapidly, the church just announced plans to eliminate almost half of its parishes there because it is unable to attract enough new priests or stop a decades-long hemorrhage of existing parishioners. The church has been severely out of touch with the reality of day-to-day life for most of its parishioners in the anglophonic world since at least the 16th Century. In the past few decades, this gulf between the church's hierarchical, all-male leadership and its parishioners has grown increasingly wider for several obvious reasons that include [but are certainly not limited to] several thousand cases of sexual abuse of children by clergy and the ensuing attempted cover-ups, the selection of a rabidly homophobic and misogynist pope who was at one time a member of the Hitler Youth, and a refusal to allow the use [or even discussion] of various humane and safe prophylactic modalities to prevent life-threatening diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

Jesus Camp

I thought this movie would be funny. It was truly disturbing. [OK, the scene where the still-closeted meth-snorting, hooker-blowing Rev. Haggard tells the cameraperson to "Repent!" was funny and not the least bit disturbing–but only because it does not involve any innocent children.] Were I The Dictator, or even the District Attorney, I would arrest or prosecute most of the adults in this movie for child mental and spiritual abuse.

The documentary follows several preteen children from their home towns to a parachristian extremist summer camp where they are taught that their elders' particular set of peculiar superstitious beliefs and worldview are the only correct ones and that it is their duty to indoctrinate the rest of us into them. One girl reminded me of Mary Catharine Gallagher, but only the pathetic parts of the character, not the funny ones. It was hard to laugh during this movie because I felt so sorry for the actual kids who were its primary subjects. It was so obvious that they were parroting dogma that they clearly didn't understand to win the approval and love of the [very warped] adults in their lives.