These all came in the Inbox on Valentine's Eve. Good timing, better reminders!
Being a woman of color with BFFs who're gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender and being a person of size with some amount of intelligence (and integrity--but my enemies and "frenemies" will blanch at that last item), I would've loved to share a fierce opinion on these subjects, but I'm taking a day off from spewing fire and brimstone.
I've been exuberantly happy since Mr. Joseph Ratzinger announced that he was stepping down from the papacy. The Vatican has long been a master of cover-ups so I think that his health reasons actually mean he can no longer bear the weight of the sins of his own church, the rampant pedophilia among his foot soldiers (priests) just being one of them.
My partner asked with a straight face Tuesday night, "So when he faces the Catholics who want ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, does that make him a lame-duck Pope?" Gosh, my cackling laughter could be heard from Barangay Dontogan, Baguio, to the Vatican state.
In the exclusive all-girl Catholic school where I grew up, my very uttering of thoughts that my partner and I share would've earned me several demerits and a scarlet letter pinned on my white blouse (in grade school, I wore one for a whole day, a red letter "V" to stand for "violator" and all because I was a naturally exuberant little girl).
The convent-bred women, I've noticed, grow up uptight, especially where sex is concerned (since we were taught intercourse is only for procreation, not an expression of love and pleasure), stick to their own kind and their own class, even marry upward so they can snootily look down on others, OR, if they're conscious of the psychic damage that sort of upbringing has done to them, make a clean break from it all, exercise their free will and search for, even if it takes some time, a camaraderie that is truly liberating.
I sense that more "lapsed" Catholics like yours truly will turn more and more into lower-case catholics who prefer inclusive groups that are gender and ideology blind, groups that accept you for what you are, including your still untapped potentials, not what you have (job/s, material possessions or figures on your income tax return), and no matter how small these groups are, they know that if two or three are gathered in the One's name... I rest my case.
Being a woman of color with BFFs who're gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender and being a person of size with some amount of intelligence (and integrity--but my enemies and "frenemies" will blanch at that last item), I would've loved to share a fierce opinion on these subjects, but I'm taking a day off from spewing fire and brimstone.
I've been exuberantly happy since Mr. Joseph Ratzinger announced that he was stepping down from the papacy. The Vatican has long been a master of cover-ups so I think that his health reasons actually mean he can no longer bear the weight of the sins of his own church, the rampant pedophilia among his foot soldiers (priests) just being one of them.
My partner asked with a straight face Tuesday night, "So when he faces the Catholics who want ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday, does that make him a lame-duck Pope?" Gosh, my cackling laughter could be heard from Barangay Dontogan, Baguio, to the Vatican state.
In the exclusive all-girl Catholic school where I grew up, my very uttering of thoughts that my partner and I share would've earned me several demerits and a scarlet letter pinned on my white blouse (in grade school, I wore one for a whole day, a red letter "V" to stand for "violator" and all because I was a naturally exuberant little girl).
The convent-bred women, I've noticed, grow up uptight, especially where sex is concerned (since we were taught intercourse is only for procreation, not an expression of love and pleasure), stick to their own kind and their own class, even marry upward so they can snootily look down on others, OR, if they're conscious of the psychic damage that sort of upbringing has done to them, make a clean break from it all, exercise their free will and search for, even if it takes some time, a camaraderie that is truly liberating.
I sense that more "lapsed" Catholics like yours truly will turn more and more into lower-case catholics who prefer inclusive groups that are gender and ideology blind, groups that accept you for what you are, including your still untapped potentials, not what you have (job/s, material possessions or figures on your income tax return), and no matter how small these groups are, they know that if two or three are gathered in the One's name... I rest my case.
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