An open letter to the Vatican

Dear Vatican,

Congratulations on co-opting (for some reason, only the males of) an unwilling cartoon family into your minions! Between this, and your recent approval of the 1980 Blues Brothers film (but what about the sequel?), I have been really pleased with the Catholic Church in the news lately. As someone whose generation often defines itself by the "allowed to watch the Simpsons as a child" and the "not allowed to watch the Simpsons" camps, I am just so impressed that you care enough to make new generations of folks comfortable with the creator-defined "presbylutheran" (non-Catholic) family. After all, why should I be bothered by your appropriating something that isn't yours? It's not like you co-opted, say, all of the major pagan holidays as your own, demoting some of my favorite gods like Brigid into saints, and destroying rich knowledge traditions that belonged to peoples for thousands of years. Also, it's not like the church has a great history of recording the great religious documents of peoples, from Europe to Africa the long way, and, uh, "translating" the gods into your mono-god.

I'm going to go ahead and take a cue from your playbook. This just in: Femmebot versus Shark has just decided that Buddha and Jesus were atheists! Ted Haggard worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Wow, you're right, Vatican, that was easy.

Ah, but bygones are, by definition, bye and gone. So I'm so glad you turned your attention to more important things, like admitting, 50 plus years after the fact, that the Holocaust actually happened. I'm sure that Jewish people everywhere are so relieved that they can finally talk about Grandma's tattoo, and where Grandpa went! Gosh, it's just so trailblazing of you to helm these issues... like, "Maybe we shouldn't have stolen so much from the Jewish people during the Holocaust (which, we suppose, was not some kind of practical joke)", the importance of keeping safer sex supplies and information from folks in Africa, and whether Jake and Elwood had a genuine (Catholic) religious experience in that... Baptist... Church.

Most importantly, I want to commend you on using pop-culture to completely distract me from the world-wide epidemic of Church hierarchy acting as an co-conspirator to thousands of reported sexual abuse cases! I'm so happy that I won't go to Catholic hell for watching the Simpsons, as you dole out billions of dollars in civil suits alone to the more than 5,000 US plaintiffs that dared to come forward. And let's be clear: we all know and understand that by refusing to arrest, report, fire, or even censure your priests, you were only protecting the victims. As a survivor of multiple periods of sexual violence myself, I can see how forcing silence on the victims and moving the hierarchically-enabled sexual predators to a new, unsuspecting populace is the most considerate thing you could do.

So, anyway, I just want to commend you on your massive organization, which has managed to create, train, and protect a legion of pedophiles, perpetuate sexism on  every continent, increase the spread of AIDS in Africa, and co-opt everything from the earliest nature-based religions to a US cartoon show. Oh! And let's not forget how you've helped spread anti-antisemitism across the whole world, even though the majority of your bible comes from the Talmud, and the man you worship is a Jew.

"Ok, I'll get along with them. Then, I will hug some snakes! Yes, I will hug and kiss some poisonous *snakes*!
... Now that's sarcasm." -Homer J, 1995

 
Catholicism, your powers of denial are breathtaking, your cruelty in the name of a loving god is mind-blowing, and your complete lack of irony as you destroy everything you come into contact with is simply heartbreaking.

I want to wish suffering on you but I know only a group of isolated, extremely miserable people could take the actions you have taken. I wish that you had to absorb the suffering you have doled out, the way that, according to your stories, your demi-god absorbed the punishment for the sins of his people.

I want to burn you to the ground, but I think you're doing a pretty good job of that yourself.

So just know this, Vatican: You won't always have the power to name reality for a large and powerful segment of the world. And you had better pray to your god and his atheist son that those who come after act with the mercy, humility, and compassion that you purport to value.

Fuck You/Aloha/I Love You,

Jellybean Bonanza