Marriage in Catholicism

While driving back from dropping off a carload of stuff at the new apartment, I caught a news report on the top of the hour: A Kenyan Archbishop by the name of Milingo was excommunicated for getting married, and ordaining other married men as bishops without papal authority. (Article)

For those of you who weren't brought up Catholic, excommunication is a sort of religious censure imposed by the church. Until and unless the excommunicated are willing to admit their guilt and repent, they are not permitted to take part in any sacrament. If the excommunicant is unwilling to repent, this essentially condemns them to hell. The inability to attend confession = stains on the soul at death = eternal damnation. It was used as a weapon during the Middle Ages in order to exact obedience from those who would challenge the authority of the church. If a king dared to disobey, entire countries could be excommunicated--the entirety of Scotland has been excommunicated on more than one occasion. To me, this has always seemed like man attempting to impose his will upon God, and completely illegitimate.

This news story set off alarm bells in my head, particularly after hearing the punishment meted out to the priest who admitted to fondling former Representative Mark Foley in the 1960s. The priest, Anthony Mercieca, has been banned from the priesthood, stripped of the ability to celebrate Mass, and may no longer wear vestments... and that's it. (Article)

Where's the eternal damnation for this asshole? How can anyone justify this as a reasonable course of action? Let's break this down: if you ordain a bishop without the Pope's permission, because you believe priests should be permitted to take part in one of Catholicism's seven sacraments--eternal damnation. Fuck a thirteen-year-old boy--lose the robes and you're all good.

To be fair, either Milingo or Mercieca could be redeemed in the eyes of the church by admitting their guilt and repenting. However, I don't think that the punishments fit either of the crimes presented here.

By allowing priests beneath him to marry, Milingo is attempting to infuse new life into the waning Catholic priesthood. Yes, he may be working against Papal authority, but he's doing what he believes to be best for the religion as a whole. Mercieca, on the other hand, used his role as a trusted member of the clergy to exploit and sexually abuse at least one child. If that doesn't merit damnation, I don't know what does.

Don't try to convince me of Papal infallibility in this case--I'm a Buddhist, and I don't believe for a second that the Dalai Lama has never done anything he's later regretted. You show me a man who refuses to admit he's ever made a mistake, and I'll show you George W. Bush.

All in all, the hypocrisy of these cases reek. To paraphrase Archbishop Milingo (from a different article), something is wrong in the Catholic church.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

A while ago, Karyn showed Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt. It made the front page of Digg Videos today, and I was reminded how emotionally powerful it is.

I've always loved cover songs, provided a few caveats: the coverer has to add their own distinctive style to the song, and they have to improve upon the original. Cash easily does both. Trent Reznor even said the following about the video:

I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning--different, but every bit as pure.

Although the song was released on his 2002 album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, the video is interpreted as after his wife's death--Johhny followed his wife into the grave four short months later. It's heartbreaking to watch Johnny's shaking hands spill a glass of wine on a feast table as images of June and his life flicker on the screen.

I couldn't help but tear up watching an old man mourn for his wife, waiting for death to take him so that they could be reunited.

You can find the video here.

Change of Plans

I realized that I have some pretty huge changes coming up that I haven't actually mentioned here... mostly for the reason that the only people who actually read this are people I would have already told.

Megan and I have done a complete 180° on the Seattle-based plans: I was under the impression that my lease expires at the end of November--wrongo. It expires at the end of this month. Therefore, the job search was cut much shorter than I had been anticipating, and I wasn't able to find a Seattle-area position during the brief window that could have allowed me to flee the dairy state.

Instead, Megan is coming to live in Madison. We're getting the second floor of a triplex in a really cool section of town. If you're interested, you can take a little tour here. Have you ever seen the Chad Vader shorts on YouTube? They're filmed a couple blocks away.

I'm flying out on 24 October so we can load up her car and drive back to Wisconsin... and it's going to be an adventure. Driving a '95 Toyota Tercel across most of the country is enough of a challenge: now add a hopefully-drugged-up-cat, a trailer full of all of Megan's worldly possessions, and the fact that long car trips tend to make me completely batshit insane.

Well, it's nearly 3:30AM, and I have a lease to sign tomorrow morning.

Congratulations Christine and Mike!

Christine got married on Saturday! For those of you who don't know, Christine and I dated for something close to a year, split between two semi-functional relationships. And in what I'm sure sounds like a very backhanded compliment, I've never been so glad that she and I broke up.

That requires some explanation--watching her and her new husband last night at the reception, it was obvious that she was very much in love, very happy, and very excited. The two of them were adorable. Never in all the time we dated were we anywhere near that happy; we weren't even close to right for each other. She and Mike definitely are. (Not this Mike, who shall henceforth only be known only as "Mikey" to reduce confusion.) If she'd never had the good sense to break it off with me, she never would have found Mike.

I'm doing my best to make this sound complimentary to the two of them, and not sound bitter or resentful. It's not really working. Unfortunately, I do my best writing when half in the bag, and I'm stone sober at the moment. So, trust me until I have a few drinks and revise this--there's no envy, bitterness, or resentment here. I'm genuinely happy for them.

Anyhow... congratulations, Mike and Christine. All my best to both of you.

Post-Partum Depression *

If I were the pizza guy, I'd be offended by the coupon on the lower right.

^* Get it? It's a delivery joke.

Generic Blog Post

No real purpose for this one, other than the fact that I haven't posted in quite some time.

I had a dream the other night that involved knife fighting a pair of shoes. As you would logically assume, this ended in receiving head from a woman who had been hiding in a pile of crates covered by a canvas dropcloth.