Parody

There has been a lot of chatter in the last year about the direction the L’ Osservatore Romano has taken.   First there was the story on President Obama saying there were no radical changes in his first 100 days and no mention of his rescinding the Mexico City Policy in his first week.  Subsequently there have been other articles that have drawn criticism.  A film review of Avatar brought lots of attention along with a congratulations to The Simpson’s on their 20th anniversary.

People are wondering what is the point of all of this in the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper?  Most of this is due to the confusion of the newspaper as being an official voice for the Vatican. The film reviews and The Simpson’s congrats don’t really bother me – but now they have gone too far by releasing a list of the top ten rock and pop albums of all time:

• The Beatles’ “Revolver”
• Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of The Moon”
• Oasis’ “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”
• Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
• U2’s “Achtung Baby”
• Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”
• Donald Fagen’s “The Nightfly”
• Carlos Santana’s “Supernatural”
• Paul Simon’s “Graceland”
• David Crosby’s “If I Could Only Remember My Name.”

Now obviously this is a highly subjective list.  Though certainly the L’ Osservatore Romano does not have the charism of infallible pop picks.  I mean come on, U2’s Achtung Baby over Joshua Tree or The Beatles’ Revolver over Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band? Except for Pink Floyd’s album the other picks are questionable for my Desert Island album list.  But then again I am just a middle age head banger warped by the sixties on.

L’ Osservatore Romano really needs to write on the important things; like which is better Marvel or D.C. Comics? Better yet a papal encyclical on the subject.

Regardless I think people are going to be quite shocked at the new direction the L’ Osservatore Romano is taken.  In fact one of my readers from the Vatican City State leaked to me a cover from their next weekly issue.

In the last several years there has been a large increase in Zombie fiction, movies, and references to Zombies in the culture. The excellent World War Z, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the opening of Zombieland this weekend, and the hilarious “Sean of the Dead” are just some of the examples of Zombies used in modern culture. Discussions have popped up all over the place on how to survive a Zombie apocalypse. Of course this topic is all in jest, but I think it distracts from the real Zombies living among us.

Zombies are undead, but they are animated going through the motions of the living. They survive as a mockery of what they once were and only imitate a truly living thing.

But Zombies already walk and talk among us. There are plenty of dissident Catholics and dissident religious orders that are nothing but Zombie Catholics. The Zombie religious orders have no postulants and an aging community. These orders are truly dead since they don’t grow and are full of providing dead theology and the corpse of aging heresies. Yet at the same time appear to be living animated things fooling some into believing that there words have life. The truth will set you free which is why Zombie Catholics will concentrate on one truth while ignoring others leaving them trapped in the world of the undead.

Outside of religious communities there are also plenty of Zombie professors in Catholic institutions. Now it would be nice if these Zombies would physically rot so that you could see the source of the corruption they teach. Unfortunately these undead often look just like everybody else. Though Zombie priests and religious sometimes can be identified because they will wear anything but a Roman collar or a habit. They can often be identified because they teach from the “Culture of the Undead.” Zombie Catholics might seem quite comical, but don’t ever forget that they are quite dangerous to those they convince. They teach of death in two ways – physical and spiritual . You can hear them promoting abortion or relativizing it. Creating reasons for why it alright to withdraw medical treatment from someone who is not dying. Justifying sacrificing embryos on the altar of science. When it comes to spiritual death the Zombie Catholics proclaim how a sin is not a sin and in fact something to be actively accepted. Whether it is the advocacy of homosexual acts, contraception, or any other normalization of sin; it is all a part of the Culture of the Undead.

The undead like to make other things dead to. Now Catholic Zombies don’t go limping around mumbling “Brains, Brains.” No they usually walking around saying “My brains, My brains.” One way to identify Zombie Catholics is that they call themselves “thinking Catholics” and constantly call attention to how much smarter they are than other Catholics. They love to minimize and mock the devotional practices of other Catholics and will ransack school rooms and sanctuaries to remove statues, paintings, and other signs of the devotional life. They are also love to talk against the hierarchical church even sometimes when they are apart of it.

The idea of Zombie Catholics might not seem to be very scary. But if you have ever attended a Mass influenced by the undead I say be afraid, be very afraid. Zombie Catholics being of the undead like to liven things up to give the appearance of life and most of all to be relevant.

So how do we rid ourselves of the plague of Catholic Zombies? Well we can’t just go around shooting them in the head as in pop culture Zombies. There is some folklore that they are afraid of crucifixes like Vampires since they go to so much effort to remove Crucifixes wherever they go. The only real way to get rid of Zombie Catholics is prayer and fasting and of course personally living a life of holiness. Though we must remember the Zombie Catholics will always be among us to some extent. There will always be Zombie Catholics among the Wheat. We just need to make sure they are not taken seriously so that the damage they can cause is minimized.

Just remember that you don’t turn into a Zombie Catholic because you are bitten by another Zombie Catholic. No the infection spreads when people are bitten by ideas spread through the culture. The popular fads can seem new and exciting when you don’t see the pearl of great price in your own backyard. So the best way to inoculate yourself from Zombie Catholicism is to know your faith, scripture study, prayer, fasting, the devotional life, and obedience.

Thankfully within the halls of the institutional church there has been more and more talk of gender equality. This is a breath of fresh air compared to how the all male hierarchy has responded in the past. Though sadly there is still resistance in one area that is still totally dominated by men. I find it even more sad that those groups who are so open to things like women in the priesthood have overlooked one important area of gender disparity that our prophetic voices need to cry out to Heaven about.

You might wonder what I am talking about. Sometimes areas of justice inequality happen right underneath our noses and societal stereotypes in gender roles make us miss them even if we are more finely tuned to gender disparity than others. I am speaking about ushers. Have you ever seen a female usher. Maybe some diocese are more enlightened than mine, but I have only seen male ushers. From the ultra-traditionalist ushers wearing suits to more laid back males wearing a variety of clothing. But what they all have in common is they all have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY), and are of the heterogametic sex.

This seems to be a small t tradition and there are not even any Vatican document regulating this. Though of course even if this had been a long tradition of the church and even considered part of Apostolic Tradition we would be able to override this just as in women’s ordination. When it comes to ushers to paraphrase St. Paul their are neither Jew or Greek. Some might argue that it is not the will of Christ that there be women ushers. But scripture is silent as to the sex of any ushers at the last supper. While Old Testament usher (doorkeepers/gatekeepers) were male this was just a cultural bias like the all male priesthood in Mosaic law.

Historically Ustiarius Theodora is the inscription on a 9th century mosaic in the St. Zeno Chapel of the Church of St. Praxedis in Rome. Historically, Ustiarius was the mother of Pope Paschal I, and he created the chapel for her. This is certainly proof that there were women ushers as the name shows.

Ontologically women are just as capable of taking money from others as men are. Some would make the case that they are even more capable at doing this than most men. Physically women are also just as able to pass the basket as they walk up and down the aisle so there can be no case made against them here. Women are often excellent greeters and pointing out empty seats comes naturally to them.

The Catholic Church must continue to adapt itself to changing times in order to remain prophetic. We must let go of past prejudices and fully embrace women ushers into our churches. Let go of past gender preferences and false gender roles. There will be no justice until there are women usher. So I call all women who feel they have a vocation to be an usher to let their prophetic voice guide them and to stand up and greet people as they come into the churches. Let not the gender conventions of the past deter you and rise up against male hierarchical thinking that uses their power to keep you from becoming ushers.

I am producing a movie on Ron Howards family. In the movie based on my research I say his father was a drug pusher and his mother is a prostitute and that Ron Howard engages in S&M. All of the portrayal of Ron Howard and his family in my movie and the prequel I am doing later will be highly negative. I will present the Howard family as something totally based on lies and question whether his parents really were his parents in the first place. I will also attack his fans for being foolish enough to be a fan of him considering his background. My hero will follow clues that prove this evidence

Now of course this is just a movie so people should not be upset about my portrayal of the Howard family at all. It is just entertainment people – only a fool would take my claims seriously.

Some jerk named Phill Donahue, president of the Howard League for Religious and Civil Rights has been making claims about me that are simply incorrect.

Let me be clear: neither I nor my film “Ron Howard’s family are Demons” is anti-Howard. And let me be a little controversial: I believe the Howards, including most in the hierarchy of their fan club, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery,

Mr. Phill Donohue’s booklet accuses us of lying when our movie trailer says the Howard’s ordered a brutal massacre of drug buyers and prostitutes. It would be a lie if we had ever suggested our movie is anything other than a work of fiction (if it were a documentary, our talk of massacres would have referenced the Mafia).

So come on people – get a life. The claims in the movie are simply fiction and so should not bother you at all. Next I will be doing a movie on the Dahla Lama and his work with the child porn industry another exciting fictional thriller.

[Source]

Here is my post from the last three years.

Of course Palm Sunday leads to:

A major part of Palm’s line.

The Palm Pilate.

Paul at Alive and Young has his own funny Palm Sunday graphic.

Recently a new way for Catholics to use Google came
out www.catholicgoogle.com.
This is from their about page.

Catholic search engine powered by Google striving
to provide an easy to use resource to anyone wanting to learn more
about Catholicism and provide a safer way for good Catholics to surf
the web.

Cathoogle is powered by Google using "safe
search" technology, it produces balanced results from all
perspectives, from sites all over the internet with more weighting to
given to Catholic websites and sites containing content relating to
Catholics and Catholicism. At the same time our search engine
eliminates sites and web pages containing adult themed and explicit
sexual content from web search results.

The site is not
associated or affiliated with Google.com, we work closely with Google
to help ensure that the ads are not objectionable in nature, however,
some of the results and ads that are displayed may not be in line
with Catholic doctrine and we do not endorse of any of the results or
ads displayed on Cathoogle.

If you looked up something like contraception or aborion using
Cathoogle you get quite different results as the top hits weighted
towards orthodox Catholic sites for the most part.

As you can imagine this search service does not sit to well with
some Catholics of a progressive persuasion. I just got word about
another new search service using Google that provides quite different
hits then those provided by Cathoogle.