Thank God you're not Catholic

I sit in the back row when I go to church. I don't go a lot and when I do I try not to laugh. Like everyone else, I'd like to believe that the Big JC is my homie but because I paid too much attention during philosophy class I have to admit the possibility that it's all a lie floats around in my head a lot.

Still, I would describe myself as a bad Catholic since that's the way every one of the nuns described me when I attended Catholic School.

Similarly, many people who are a part of the Catholic Church get very upset about the hierarchy of the institution. I've never really had the luxury of calling the higher ups into question because most of my friends were kicked out of school simply for being brown . . . Subsequently, I've always known my place as a Catholic.

Yet in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO. Diocese, complaints against the newly appointed Bishop Robert Finn are mounting.

Like I noted previously, you'll have a hard enough time convincing me that I'll be reunited with all of my dead pets on judgment day (I hope they don't send them to Hell too) so the inner workings of the Church really aren't that interesting to me but it's pretty amazing that even a priest knows that controlling the God like power of the media is of utmost importance. In the short time since his appointment the dude has:

- Ordered the editor of the diocesan newspaper to immediately cease publishing columns by Notre Dame theologian Fr. Richard McBrien.

- Announced that he would review all front page stories, opinion pieces, columns and editorials of The Catholic Key before publication.

Now, that's not quite up to the level of papal infallibility but it's close. There is no greater joy then telling people what they can and can't read which is why I imagine that the owners/publishers/executives of The Star are akin to God and not just because they're Jewish.

So, the important thing to take from this post is that Catholics in KC have even more problems than usual besides guilt regarding sex, hating gay relatives and the fact that divorce is equated with punching Jesus in the face.