Virgin / Whore

Illustrations by Patrick Martinez

Heard the one about the liberated Catholic girl? Still pregnant, still barefoot, but she gets to wear snowshoes on Sunday. In the USA, where many consider Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice credible presidential candidates, it may look like the battle for women’s rights has been won. Well, the mission ain’t accomplished. Women didn’t even get the vote here until 1920, they still get paid less, and their right to govern their own bodies stands under growing threat. Over most of the planet, women remain virtual slaves. And the Catholic Church, though it can look like Germaine Greer Estates compared to clitoris-hacking Islamic backwaters, has been a steady manufacturer of the shackles.

Pity the pope? It’s tempting — you never saw a garbage man with arms as trash-encumbered as Benedict XVI’s. Catholic Church membership: down heavily in Western Europe and the Americas. Clergy: dwindling to less than a skeleton crew. Mood: sour. Pope John XXIII’s Vatican II Ecumenical Council of the 1960s, hyped at the time as a window on revitalization, looks like a fake-out now that successive pontiffs have retreated behind ancient bulwarks of dogma and mysticism. Most of the faithful worldwide, grappling against real-world pitchforks of overpopulation, tribalism, political chaos and economic collapse, are giving the big finger to Rome’s medieval pronouncements on birth control. And you might’ve heard a word or two about priests and boys — kind of a pain in the ass, not to mention the wallet. The Holy Father’s even under legal assault for molester shielding. Pity the pope.

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